


Balance

by greenglowsgold



Category: Glee
Genre: Gun Violence, M/M, Puckurt Big Bang, Superpowers, mental manipulation, torture references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 03:26:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenglowsgold/pseuds/greenglowsgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt Hummel is a contact telepath and controls people from the moment their skin touches his. Noah Puckerman practices electricity manipulation and lets sparks dance over his hands. They are very dangerous people, but even more dangerous is the world that exists around them. Something has to give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balance

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work for the Puckurt Big Bang by greenglowsgold! [Fanmix](http://raving-liberal.livejournal.com/998868.html) by raving_liberal, as well as the art!

  


  


**Prologue**

  


  


“Hey, Wake up.”

Kurt groaned and tried to roll away from the hand shaking his shoulder.

“We’re gonna be late if you don’t get up,” the voice continued. Damn that voice. It made far too much sense.

With a heavy sigh, Kurt dragged open his eyes just wide enough to catch a fuzzy glimpse of tanned skin, which disappeared when he rubbed a hand over tired eyes and tried to force himself to sit up.

“Finally.” Noah laughed, and Kurt’s vision was actually clear enough that time to see his boyfriend standing by the bed and looking much too energetic for 6:45 in the morning. “I was starting to think you were totally conked out or something after last night. C’mon. I got breakfast.”

He held out a hand and, once Kurt had gathered the energy to raise his own far enough to take it, hauled Kurt out of bed in one strong motion. Then he started leading them to the kitchen and it became one of the many times Kurt was grateful for the convenient absence of stairs in their apartment. He’d probably trip over one of the steps and break his neck or something.

“Thanks,” he said softly when Noah slid a plate of he-didn’t-really-care-what in front of him, and started chewing mechanically. There was a cup of coffee, too, but that didn’t help him; it was just a vain attempt at tricking his mind into being a little bit more awake before its time. God, he hated having to face this part of the day, but if he didn’t at least get started this early, he’d never make it out the door in time.

He stumbled through breakfast and into the shower, where he washed himself methodically until he’d moved each of the bottles from one shelf to the other (he’d come up with the system after it had become clear that he would never be able to remember what he’d done on his own, as evidenced by the morning he’d somehow used up half the bottle of conditioner and yet could have sworn he’d forgotten that step). Noah greeted him with a smile and a warm towel.

“Sun rose a few minutes ago. “Go wake yourself up.”

Besides the lack of stairs, the best thing about this apartment was the large window in the bedroom with eastern exposure. He stood in front of the window as the sun’s rays started creeping through the glass and breathed in. Flickers of orange light danced around him for several minutes. Finally, he released his breath and turned away, energy sparking through his veins.

His day never really started until the sunrise. The summer months were easy, though Noah tended to grumble when Kurt opened the curtains at 5:30 AM, but winter mornings left him sluggish and drained, especially when there was too much cloud cover. He usually slept in on those days, unless he had something specific to get up for.

When he finally reappeared in the kitchen — dressed and actually ready for the day, this time — he found Noah sipping coffee at the table. For him, it wasn’t a futile gesture, but Kurt didn’t feel so jealous now that he’d had his own, much more effective version of a morning energy boost. Noah smirked into his mug when he caught sight of Kurt in the doorway.

“What?” Kurt said.

“You’re glowing.”

Kurt looked down at his hands to find a soft, orange aura. “Damnit.” Must’ve gotten a little too much. “I don’t have time for this; we’ve got a meeting.”

“Want me to cool you down?” Noah’s smirk widened as he pushed off the table and wrapped an arm around Kurt’s waist. They didn’t technically have time for this, but Kurt decided to ignore that for a minute in favor of enjoying the feeling of Noah’s lips against his.

Eventually, though, he pulled away and glanced down at his skin once more: no better than before, and still noticeably orange. Meanwhile, sparks of bright blue electricity were crackling around Noah’s hands. “I think we warmed you up by accident, instead.” A few of the sparks jumped to Kurt’s hand, pulled as if by a magnet, and disappeared under his skin, adding to the build of energy inside his chest.

“Babe, it’s not like it matters. We’re getting hired _because_ of this stuff. They already know; they’re not gonna flip out if they see it.”

“I know,” Kurt grumbled, “but anyone else would.”

“So we’ll take the back streets, ride under the radar. We’d probably have to do that anyway, after last night. Just in case.”

“And,” Kurt continued, “I have to change now. This orange glow is a bitch to coordinate with. I mean, I’ve got things planned for this, but…” He made a face. “I never get to wear red.”

Noah chuckled and lets his hands drop as Kurt pulled away toward the bedroom. “Why are we taking this case, anyway? The job we pulled last night is more than enough to keep us set for a while, and we’re out with the first guy who calls us the next morning?”

“I talked to Santana. This ‘guy’ is important. You don’t say no.”

“And she doesn’t know anyone else who could’ve taken this one for us?”

“Nope.” Kurt poked his head out of the bedroom, grinning in amusement. “We’re _special_.”

“We _are_ awesome,” Noah agreed.

“Plus, this one needs a two-person team.” Kurt continued to speak loud enough to be heard from the other room as he pulled out a shirt that should match. “Not many of those around.”

“Guess not.”

Kurt exited the bedroom and stared at the empty kitchen for a moment or two before he spotted Noah sitting on the living room couch, legs thrown forward and head tilted back to rest against the cushions. His head rolled to the side when Kurt entered the room. “Ready to go?”

“I guess so.” Noah heaved himself off the couch with a groan and grabbed his jacket off the chair.

Kurt frowned at the heavy motions and stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Noah muttered, then he sighed. “I know we do the jobs together, but it’s not exactly quality time, you know?”

“You’re sweet. But you know that most of the people we work for aren’t terribly concerned about our personal lives. Or anything at all except getting what they want, really, which is why they pay us so well.”

They weren’t running late yet, but they would be if they didn’t get moving, so Kurt started tugging Noah toward the door as he talked. “The job itself isn’t for a couple days though, I think. I mean, there’s some prep work to take care of, but I’m sure we could find some time for our own activities.”

“Right.” Noah nodded, letting himself be pulled along. “And after this one, we take a vacation, right? No calls, no jobs, no nothing.”

“Take a break from all the questionable morality?” “Yeah.” “That sounds lovely. I’ll tell Santana our phones are off the hook for the next couple of weeks.”

“Good.” Noah drew him in for one more kiss, one that could actually make them late, but what the hell. _They_ were the ones with the awesome superpowers, after all. The client could wait ten minutes.

“Come on,” Kurt said when he finally pulled back. “Let’s go be the bad guys.”

If that was what they were, really. They certainly weren’t the other kind.

  


-

  


  
**The Organization**   


  


  


“Morning, Kurt. Noah.” Brian smiled at them as they walked past, raising a hand from the task of flipping through his pile of mail to wave briefly.

“Hey,” Noah said, and it was followed quickly by Kurt’s greeting, which was short and a little sharp and a lot we-don’t-have-time-for-this. On the other hand, they really did need to check their mail. They’d been so tied up in their last job that it’d been a couple days since they’d bothered to open the mailbox, which was at least partly because they always had to go places where it just wasn’t safe to carry personal items like, say, keys.

Noah searched his pockets — certain that this morning, at least, he’d deemed the day’s events harmless enough to have his entire key chain with him — and was rewarded when his fingers brushed metal that was cool to the touch and clinked as he pulled it out. He walked over to the rows of boxes and chose a key that fit into the one that sat two over and one up from Brian’s, ignoring the exasperated look Kurt shot him as he did. Yeah, he knew they were going to be late. Yeah, it didn’t hurt to do normal life stuff occasionally, too.

“Been pretty cold out there lately,” Brian said, and Noah had to fight not to roll his eyes because Brian might just have been _the_ most boring conversationalist ever, but he always insisted on initiating it.

“Mmhmm,” Noah hummed distractedly. Credit card— no. Bill— save it for later. “Not for long, though.”

“Oh? You think we’ll be getting warmer weather this week?”

Free shampoo sample— as if Kurt would ever allow that brand into the apartment. “It’s gotta happen sometime.” Ad. Ad.

“I suppose so.”

After identifying another bill and a few more useless hand-outs (and answering another pointless question or two from Brian-the-infinitely-uninteresting), Noah shoved the items they would need to deal with later back into the box; they could bring them upstairs when they got back. He dumped the rest into the trash can by the door. “See you,” he called to Brian on his way out, pulled along by Kurt’s tight grip on his arm.

“Oh!” Brian looked up from the mail he was _still_ sorting through, surprised to see Noah halfway out the door. “Oh, well, goodbye then!” He turned back to the letters, frowning as if annoyed by the abrupt end to such a stimulating conversation.

They needed new neighbors. Definitely.

“I don’t know why you insist on encouraging him, Noah,” Kurt grumbled as soon as the door swung shut.

“He doesn’t need encouraging. He does it on his own.” Noah shrugged, setting a quick pace to satisfy the energy jolting oddly through his veins. It felt like one of those mornings, the restless ones he got after a job that was built up way too much for its less-than-satisfying ending. “Besides, it’s good to talk to people sometimes.”

“I do talk to people!” Kurt protested. “I talk to you, and my family, and people at work… You know, interesting people.”

“So, basically everyone who already knows about us.”

“And Finn.” Kurt tilted his head to the side, considering. “And his girlfriend. Sometimes.”

“Family,” Noah pointed out. “And almost family. That doesn’t count.”

“Count for what?”

“We’re supposed to look normal to the… normal people.” Noah grimaced at the wording, but didn’t stop. “Like, if we ever went crazy and started axe-murdering people and the police talked to all the neighbors, they’re supposed to be able to say how we were nice, regular, quiet guys and they can’t believe this happened.”

“Why on earth would we need axes?” Kurt scrunched up his nose in disgust at the idea. “That just sounds messy.”

“It’s just a thing, Kurt.”

“I’m just saying, we could do a perfectly adequate job without weapons of any kind. And I doubt we’d get caught, either.”

“I’m sorry, are you _suggesting_ this?” Noah raised an eyebrow, glancing sideways at Kurt. “‘Cause you’re getting weird.”

“No. Just poking holes in your metaphor.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not the point, anyway. Point is we’re supposed to blend in, so stop talking about murdering people and starting having boring conversations.”

Kurt rolled his eyes. “You started it.”

They fell silent for a block or so, until Kurt started to turn down one of the smaller streets and Noah grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?”

“Back streets, remember?” Kurt gestured around his body. “Subtle? Normal?”

“Oh, but…” They were already a little late out the door. That was mostly Noah’s fault, he knew, but it would save so much time if they didn’t have to walk. Plus, Brian was right about one thing; it was cold out today. “It’s not so bad, really.”

It wasn’t. Noah recognized the glow for what it was, but the average passer-by probably wouldn’t look at him and think, ‘Oh God, he got that from the _sun_ , didn’t he?’ Frankly, layered over Kurt’s pale skin, it looked more like a fake tan, and he mentioned as much.

“ _How_ is that reassuring?” Kurt started peering intently at his skin, looking more agitated by the second.

“We can take the subway!” Noah insisted. “Remember how New York has that awesome public transportation system? That we never use? It’ll save time. C’mon, you’re always worried about being late.”

“More like I’m worried about who _would_ worry if we were late,” Kurt said with a sigh. “I swear, someone should take Mercedes aside one day and explain that it just isn’t _healthy_ to stress this much over check-ins.”

“You feel free to tell her that. Definitely.”

Kurt frowned, but finally allowed himself to be pulled toward the nearest station. “You know I won’t. She’d take it the wrong way.”

-

“You made it!” Mercedes called when she looked up from her desk and spotted the pair of them walking in.

“Don’t we always?” Kurt gave her a grin that she returned enthusiastically. “You don’t have to look quite so surprised.”

“Not surprised. Just happy.”

“No worries, ‘Cedes.” Noah sent her a smile of his own as he leaned into the side of the desk. “We didn’t get ourselves killed. We knew we’d never get away with it, if you heard what happened.”

“That’s right,” she said sternly. “Don’t even think about it—”

“Because you’d bring us back and kill us yourself,” Kurt recited. “Painfully. Uh-huh. Not to mention I’d lose the right to take you out shopping ever again. Which, really, has me much more concerned.”

“How ‘bout your brother?” Noah asked her. “James come back in one piece too?”

“Yep. Boring run. And he complained about it for a good twenty minutes, too.”

“Ours was the same,” Noah said. “Nothing happened.”

“Standard pick-up, right?” Mercedes finally turned from Kurt to look at the file she’d pulled from the stack on her desk.

“ _Very_ standard.” Kurt sighed. “They shouldn’t even have needed us, really. Security was practically nonexistent. Regular-grade muscle-for-hire could’ve pulled it off, easy.”

“Did you see the guys who hired you for this one? Cowards are half our market.”

Noah had to slam his foot against the floor when he realized he’d been tapping it impatiently for the last minute or so. Kurt was complaining about the job being boring, but at least he’d had something to _do_ last night. That was the way it went, sometimes. Some jobs needed more of his technique, some needed Kurt’s, and it tended to leave whichever of them got left behind with some extra energy the next day. All that build-up for zero action.

It wasn’t enough to break their rule, though. They always worked together.

“Hey, you got this, right?” he said finally, interrupting whatever Mercedes was saying. He ignored her glare and focused on Kurt. “I’m here and alive and everything; I’ve checked in. You got the details?”

“Yeah, sure.” Kurt raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Cool. I’m just… gonna take a walk, or something.” Noah shrugged, gesturing somewhere over his shoulder in the general direction of the rest of the building. “Catch you upstairs for the meeting.”

“Just don’t lose track of time.” Kurt was already turning back to Mercedes. “Santana may _actually_ kill you. This one’s important.”

“Uh-huh.”

Noah sighed in relief when he started moving again, walking quickly through the halls without any sort of destination in mind. Maybe he’d go for a run tonight or something. He seriously needed to get rid of some of the energy burning in his chest.

Especially if he was going to be around so many people, he realized, stepping abruptly to the side to avoid brushing against Mike. “Sorry.”

“S’fine.” Mike waved off his concern but moved another step away at the same time. “You’re sparking? It’s only morning.”

“Boring job last night, you know.” He clenched his hand shut around the tiny flashes of blue in his palm.

“Well, no.” Mike grinned. “But I get it.”

“You got one today?”

“God, no. Just stopping in. Tina has the day off; we’re going out.”

“Lucky.”

“No,” Mike corrected. “ _Specialized_. That’s your problem; you two together are too versatile. That’s why you keep getting jobs.”

“Really?” Noah said. “‘Cause I thought it just meant we’re that much more awesome than you are.”

“Shut up. I can hear your thoughts, man. I know you don’t think that.”

“Busted.” He was used to it, though. Living with Kurt, it was hard to keep secrets.

“Don’t even try.”

“Whatever. Go romance the wife, man; pretend you’re not totally whipped.”

He had a point though, Noah decided, waving Mike off to his date. They really needed to learn how to say no more often, because they _were_ well-suited to a lot of the jobs that came up. Not that they minded the extra money that came with an increased workload like that, but they really didn’t need it, especially when they couldn’t use it most of the time. Their standard of living was set against the goal to never stand out.

Mostly, he didn’t mind. It wasn’t like the apartment was awful, just ordinary, and the money they saved was left to build in a bank account. It felt like a safety net. They didn’t have many of those in their lives.

Noah turned a corner, hugging the wall as he did. He’d passed that office already, he noticed. That was the problem with a building like this. It was nice, definitely; government funding would do that. On the other hand, they really didn’t need that much space here, just a few offices and meeting rooms for clients. They weren’t even that large an organization, and they tended to appear more impressive than they were.

Well, they were pretty impressive. They still weren’t _big_ , though, even if they were bigger than the LA office. Even if they had a larger concentration of potential agents than almost any other country in the world.

At some point during the third complete circuit around the building, Noah forgot to stick quite so close to the wall, and his hand swung out into the open area of the hallway, brushing against a person walking past in the opposite direction.

“Ow!” Quinn yelped, jerking at the contact and bringing up a hand to clutch at her side. Her form flickered in the air for just a moment, jumping in and out of sight at the shock.

“Sorry.” Noah winced a little at the glare she gave him. Scary. All the women he worked with were scary. “I’m kinda charged up this morning. Didn’t see you.”

“You _shocked_ me.” Quinn grumbled a bit, but was already shaking off the incident. Her fingers rubbed a little circle into her side, where Noah’s hand had brushed, before falling back down to their normal position.

Noah decided not to bother mentioning that it could have been worse and a shock really wasn’t so bad, considering. Instead, he just clamped down hard on the power running through him and, with the new measure of self-control firmly in place, reached out to put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder until she stopped glaring at the wall and looked up at him. “Really. Sorry.”

She sighed, glancing from the hand lying innocently on her arm up to his face, searching. “I thought you had that under control again.” Her voice had changed, calmed down enough that it came off sympathetic instead of accusing, so Noah didn’t walk away. He just took his hand back and clenched it tightly when it rested by his side again, reining in the sparks.

“I do. Mostly. Just not today, I guess.”

“Today?”

“Too much energy,” he explained. “Think I’m gonna have to go for a run later or something.”

“Didn’t you have a job last night? Pick-up?” Quinn asked. “And why are you so far from the check-in desk, then?”

“Yeah, some crappy art piece that got passed around like three times last month, and two of them were by our people. Seriously a waste of time. And Kurt’s taking care of it. It was mostly his job, anyway; I didn’t get to do much. Built myself up for nothing, so yeah, that’s why I have so much left-over energy today.”

“I don’t understand why you insist on working together _every_ time.” Quinn leaned to the side, resting her shoulder against the wall as she spoke.

“Well, we do.” Noah shrugged.

“But you just _said_ they only needed him for this one,” she pointed out. “You said you got worked up for nothing and now you’re having an awful day because of it.”

“I never said—”

“No, but you look it. Couldn’t you have just let him take that one on his own?”

“Well, the next one should be better. Asked for a two-person team. Asked for _us_ , actually.” He smirked at her. “You know you’re jealous.”

“Another one?” Her eyes narrowed. “You just got back!”

“Santana started yelling. Easier not to argue.”

“Wonderful.” Quinn rolled her eyes. “Meanwhile, I just got back from her yelling at me _not_ to work. ‘Take a few weeks off,’ she says. ‘Figure out how not to be crazy.’ Bitch.”

“Yeah, but she’s got a point.” Noah stepped around Quinn and started walking toward Santana’s office. Might as well wait outside at this point; he was pushing close to their official meeting time by now, and if she’d already gone one round of shouting this morning, she was probably primed for another. No need to give her an excuse.

Quinn waited until he’d walked past her, then pushed off the wall and fell into step beside him. “ _God_ ,” she complained, “you punch _one_ paying client in the face—”

“Three.”

“Three. Fine. But all from the same group. That counts as one. And you should have heard what they were saying! I don’t even know how they found out about us, if that’s how they feel.”

Noah shrugged. A lot of their clients were people with a reason to know about them and their skills, people who had family or friends involved in the agency or who had connections to others who did. Either that, or they walked in with nothing but a tip that this was the place to get a job done quietly and no idea of how that actually happened. So yeah, they didn’t usually get people eager to call them freaks.

Honestly, how stupid could you get, talking shit in front of people you _know_ could kick your ass?

Sometimes, when he stopped to think about the numbers, it felt like way too many people knew about them. There were a lot, really, so how were they still a secret? Then he remembered the population of New York City: over eight million. And on top of that, the country. And on top of that, the world, most of whose countries didn’t have nearly the same saturation as what America had to deal with. So, no, maybe it wasn’t so unreasonable after all.

Quinn scoffed and continued. “You know Santana would’ve done the same thing if she’d been there to hear them talking. She’s freaked out over way less.”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t there. You were.”

“And I’ve been punished for it ever since.” Quinn sighed, dropping heavily onto a bench just outside Santana’s office. “Whatever. Not like I mind the vacation.”

In favor of not being the next person Quinn punched, Noah ignored the lie. “Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s on vacation but us.” He sat on the other side of the bench.

“And whose fault is that?” Quinn smiled gently. “Like I said, you’d each get so much more rest if you would just stick to solo work. No unnecessary missions, and you wouldn’t get picked up by every over-cautious client who figures two agents are better than one.”

“We _are_ , though. Two at a time is safer; someone watches your back and you got more ways to deal with a situation.”

“No way.” Quinn shook her head. “You go in alone, you don’t have anyone to worry about besides yourself. You don’t have to waste time or attention making sure your partner is okay. That kind of thing just slows you down.”

“That’s only true if you don’t trust your partner to take care of himself,” Noah said, dismissing the concern with a wave of his hand. “And, seriously. Kurt? He’d be fine. I don’t have to worry about him.”

“But you do,” Quinn pointed out. “Even if you don’t have to, you worry about him every time you go out, right? I’m not saying you _need_ to help him all the time,” she continued, her voice rising a little when he opened his mouth to protest, “I’m just saying you think about it. Half your mind is on where he is and making sure he’s okay, that whole time you’re on the job. It’s distracting.”

Noah frowned at the floor, snapping his fingers idly against the build-up of electricity that gathered there. He could shock her again, but she would just grumble and bitch at him and probably pick right back up with the lecture as soon as she was done. She was like that.

“You used to do solo work. You never had to think about anyone but yourself, right? Never had to worry about whether an escape route would cover two people instead of one, never had to wonder if ducking a blow meant it’d hit someone else, just did what you went there to do. And you were _good_ at it; I remember.”

‘ _We’re good at it now, too_ ,’ he thought, but Quinn was already moving on.

“It’s going to get you killed one of these days.” Quinn’s voice fluttered, just a little, when her eyes met Noah’s, and she went back to boring a hole through the wall with her stare. “Because when you’re watching someone else’s back, you don’t watch your own front, and you get yourself taken down by some moron who can barely even point a gun.”

She fell silent, chewing at her lip. Looking closely, Noah could see the exact moment when she realized she was going to have to reapply her lip-gloss, and the moment she decided she didn’t care. It occurred to him that he might be just as bad as Kurt at spending time around normal people, if this was how well he knew his coworkers.

“Have you ever dated an agent?”

Quinn paused, looking almost startled by the intrusion into the silence. Wide eyes blinked twice before she finally replied, “No.”

Noah smirked. “Never dated a civilian either, have you? Na, never mind,” he said when Quinn glared. “Not my business, not the point.” She probably hadn’t had a serious relationship since high school. She was one of those ‘all work, no play’ agents; the ones who really needed to just _uncurl_ for a second and realize that the danger didn’t have to rule every little piece of their lives. “Point is you haven’t been with one of ours, so you don’t know.”

“I’m not talking about dating someone; that’s fi—”

“Well, I am. Kurt and I were already working our own jobs when we started going out, you know? It’s way easier, not having to lie about work, and I could just say I had to reschedule ‘cause of a job I picked up for Friday night without it being a big thing. Helps when you’re both on the same page. Plus, like you said, we were good at it. We swapped stories, got competitive.”

“Bet he loved that.” A smile was tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Duh.” Noah chuckled. “We both did. It was totally fun and cool to actually talk to someone about it instead of just walking away from work and having to act normal all the time. Then like two months in he’s telling me about some move he pulled to get out of being shot, and I can’t really focus on the cool part because, you know, he almost got _shot_.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Quinn broke in. “You can’t focus!”

“Not when that kind of shit is happening and you can’t find out about it ‘til after it’s done, no, you can’t. So we figured we’d just shut up about it and pretend it didn’t bug us, and I think Kurt went with it ‘cause he’s crazy cynical and didn’t think we’d work out, but we did and then one night I came home bleeding and Kurt flipped out.” He shrugged. “It’s easier when you’re there to do something about the bad stuff instead of having to just sit around and wait.”

“So you started working together.”

“Santana didn’t seem to mind. Well, plus she was new at the whole boss thing back then, and by the time she got everything figured out, we were already awesome at it. People wanted us.”

“You’re seriously that worried about it?” Quinn arched a smooth eyebrow. “Our jobs qualify as ‘high-risk,’ yes, but we’re _good_ at them. There’s hardly ever a problem. How many people do you know who’ve gotten killed on a job? At least, the smart ones, who made it past the first couple runs.”

“It only takes the one time. And, you know, still dangerous. You’re saying you’d be fine with that? You’d let someone you loved walk into a field of motion detectors and bullets because there’s ‘hardly ever a problem’ and they’ll ‘probably’ come back?”

Quinn considered this for a minute, chewing freely at her bottom lip now that the perfect line of her lip gloss was already long gone. “No,” she said finally. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

“Hey.” Kurt smiled brightly as he rounded the corner and spotted them. “Quinn! I thought you were off for a few weeks?”

The sideways glare Quinn shot him for that comment wasn’t quite as menacing as usual, softened by the lingering concern on her face.

“Uh, sorry?” The smile began to drain away.

“No, never mind. It’s nothing.” Quinn waved him off as she stood. “I have to go fix my lip gloss.”

Kurt nodded with the air of someone who had noticed the need already but chose not to mention it. “Right. Is Santana done yelling at people yet?”

“Probably not.” Noah craned his neck toward the door, but he couldn’t see in from where he was seated.

“I’ll go stop her.” Kurt rolled his eyes and turned on the spot, heading toward the office door. “She’s lucky she doesn’t scare off every single paying client we get.”

“If you stop her, she’ll just start in on _us_ ; you know that, right?” Noah heaved himself off the bench, moving to join Kurt where he was already knocking on the door. Clearly, it was a lost cause, so he didn’t protest the surprise when Quinn’s hand clamped onto his arm before he even took two steps forward.

“I understand what you’re saying, I really do. But my point still stands. One of you is going to wind up a liability someday.”

Before he could stop himself, Noah’s eyes flicked to Kurt for a second, and Quinn smiled grimly at the motion.

“You’re too easy to use against each other. Everyone in love is.”

Her fingers squeezed his arm for just a moment — it would have been a comforting gesture if not for the nails that were just long enough to pinch his skin, but he didn’t think she noticed that — and then she turned and left.

Girls were so dramatic.

Any thought he might have given to the words themselves was interrupted a second later when a voice yelled his name from inside the office, and he dragged himself around to walk toward the door. They could totally handle anything that came at them, anyway. All these cool powers weren’t just for show.

Santana was the more immediate problem, and probably more dangerous. He had to smile to himself when he voice rose in volume; she could yell all she wanted, but he knew she loved them. Nice try.

They’d worked a job or two together, years ago, though pairings were just as rare then as they were today, and they only ever did it when someone requested it specifically. She’d side with him against Quinn’s arguments, he was sure of it. He remembered exactly how good she was at what she did, how carefully she’d watched his back.

He remembered why she’d stopped and moved straight up to sitting behind a desk with a near manic passion for keeping everyone safe.

Too easy to use against each other, right, but that wasn’t his story.

Noah smiled at Kurt when he reached the door, but it must not have reached his eyes, because Kurt tilted his head to the side and held his gaze for a long moment. “Serious thoughts?”

“Guess so.” Noah edged his hand away from Kurt’s when it reached out for him, which managed to make Kurt look hurt for a moment. “It’s nothing, babe.” It really was, but there was no reason to mess up the morning by letting Kurt pick up those stray thoughts before he could tuck them safely away, so he was careful to catch nothing but fabric when he laid a bare hand on Kurt’s shoulder and gave him a gentle nudge into the office. “Let’s go get yelled at.”

That seemed like a less likely option when they entered the room to see Santana’s hard gaze focused not on them, but on the two men in suits taking up the chairs in front of her desk. One of the men turned to face them and smiled.

  


It took Kurt an extra minute or so to focus on the unfamiliar occupants of Santana’s office because he was busy searching Noah’s face for signs of unease. He knew Noah had to be twitchy today; he wasn’t _blind_ and he could see the electricity jumping at the surface of his skin, which really wasn’t unusual for the day after a slow job.

What _was_ unusual was the way Noah’s hand had jerked away from his. That sort of thing usually meant that Noah had something he wanted to keep to himself, and while Kurt logically understood the need for occasional privacy — they already shared far more than most couples anyway, simply by necessity — that didn’t mean he was thrilled about it. Maybe he would talk to Noah later, he thought, and finally looked around the room.

The two chairs directly in front of Santana’s desk were already taken, though both occupants had stood up by the time Kurt started paying attention, straightening their ties and holding out their hands to shake.

Kurt skimmed his eyes over the closest of the two. Short, neatly-trimmed hair, a suit that was clearly tailored to fit the man rather than being straight off the rack, and calloused hands with the skin stretched a little too far over the bones. The second man was much the same, if a little younger, with less gray in his hair and skin that fit him better. People like them always fit into one of two categories: successful businessmen who liked to go camping on the weekends, or—

“Hello. Agent Wallace, FBI.”

‘ _Or that_ ,’ Kurt thought, holding back a sigh as he reached out to accept the handshake that was being offered.

There it was. He was always surprised when these people, who knew perfectly well what would happen upon contact, insisted on keeping up with social conventions. As soon as his fingers wrapped around the taught skin of Agent Wallace’s hand, he knew far more than the man’s name.

Agent Wallace had shoes on that were a little bit too tight. He’d bought a lottery ticket this morning and had a good feeling about this one. Something spicy sounded good for dinner, but he was sick of that Mexican place his wife kept dragging him too. That was just the first layer of his mind.

It was a rather eclectic mix, and not what Kurt would have expected to find from someone about to begin a meeting with people generally considered dangerous. All of it was covered with a layer of nerves, though — _This meeting has to go well_ — which was far more typical. Kurt smiled knowingly at the man and felt the anxiety shoot up — _Oh hell what does he…_ — before everything clamped down and Kurt let his hand slip away.

“Agent Donovan,” said the younger man. He was smiling at Noah, but his eyes flicked over for a moment, which reminded Kurt to reply after a quick check with Santana (she nodded at his sideways glance, but didn’t look happy about it).

“I’m Kurt, and this is Noah.”

“Hey.” Noah turned to Santana as soon as his own hand was released. “Did we have a meeting, or…?”

“We have one.” Santana gestured to the men. “This is it.”

Kurt eyebrows were halfway to his hairline before he could stop them. “Oh. Alright.” Everyone got government jobs sometimes, and they were no exception. They just usually got more notice than… well, none. He didn’t say anything about it, though, just grabbed a chair off to the side and sat down, because Santana looked even less pleased than he was and she’d probably already worked through all the arguments he could’ve come up with.

When everyone was finally settled into a chair, Agent… Waller? Warner? Damnit, Kurt had already forgotten their names, and it had barely been 30 seconds. It was the older one, anyway. Agent Whoever cleared his throat.

“There’s been a situation developing over the last few days. Ms. Lopez tells us you two might be the best equipped to deal with it.”

“As I’ve said, almost all of our agents would work just fine.” Santana pointedly ignored the short cough one of the men gave to cover a laugh at the word ‘agents.’

“Yes, we’ve been through all the options, thank you,” said Agent Missed-A-Spot-Shaving — Kurt really should get better at remembering names, but he couldn’t find it within himself to care about these in particular. He smiled, a placating gesture that told them he knew exactly how much he didn’t have to care what they thought about the matter. Yes, Kurt really did not care about learning his name. “We would really be much more comfortable with a two-man team. People with experience. Have you two been watching the news lately?”

“Depends,” Noah said. “What were we supposed to be seeing?”

“Emily McGowan, seventeen.” Agent Number One sifted through his briefcase as he spoke, the job made slower by the stiffness in his aging fingers, and finally pulled out a thin file which he handed to Kurt. “Disappeared four days ago.”

Kurt flipped open the folder and found a photograph of a girl with wavy blond hair smiling at the camera. He frowned. “Yes, we heard about that.” The evening news had used that same picture, in fact. “We heard you had no idea what happened, too. I’m not sure how you think we could help with this; we’re retrieval, not location, unless you have a suspect I can read.”

Agent Number Two shook his head. “The news may not have been entirely accurate. We got a lead, just recently, but it isn’t anything we would have hoped for.”

“Oh?” Kurt passed the file to Noah. There was probably more in it than just the picture, but all the information would certainly be repeated by the men, probably multiple times over the course of an hours-long lecture. Federal agents tended to do that a lot.

“Nothing ever stays simple, does it?” Number Two sighed. “I couldn’t tell you where we got the information, of course—”

“Of course.”

“—but there seems to be a larger organization involved. We believe they had very specific reasons for taking her and that she has been kept alive, hopefully unharmed. Beats the odds.”

Noah raised an eyebrow at the statement. “A ‘larger organization’? What kind of—”

“We are not at liberty to say.” At that, Kurt had to work not to groan. No, they would not be told any more than absolutely necessary, because even though the FBI was coming to them for help, even though they would presumably be working alongside officers and agents, they weren’t in any way equal. They weren’t to be trusted with any excess information.

“The important part,” Number Two continued, “is that this is a little trickier than the typical hostage situation. For one thing, they have a lot of extra manpower.”

“Right.” Kurt shot a glance at Noah and got a shrug in reply before he went on. “So, if you don’t mind my asking, why exactly do you need _us_? Aren’t there SWAT teams specifically designed for this sort of thing?” Not to mention that they never got called in for anything this public, and the story had appeared on the news, even. The government preferred to leave them well in the shadows.

“We have teams that could take this on, yes, but we’re concerned about what could occur in the process. We would do all we could, but the fact is that this group has a lot of men and even more ammunition, and no inclination to back down. People would die. Possibly many people, and maybe even the girl, before we could reach her. We would like to avoid that outcome.”

“What we need from you…” Number One leaned forward until his folded hands were nearly touching Kurt’s knee. “Is a certain element of stealth. You two can sneak in, take out cameras, men, whatever, without them noticing until it’s too late. We hear you’ve done it before.”

From the corner of his eye, Kurt noticed Noah’s lips twitching upward before he forced them back down, and he had to agree. This was the sort of thing they did not mind being known for.

“Once you’ve cleared most of the crowd,” Number One continued, “we can go inside and retrieve the girl, and start taking people in. If we coordinate right, we might come through without a single death to report. That’s why we want you.”

“I see.”

Noah was still looking over the file, flipping through pages that Kurt hadn’t even bothered to glance at and frowning at the words written there. “Hey,” he said suddenly. “D’you mind if we talk with Sa— uh, Ms. Lopez for a few minutes?”

“Of course.” Both agents leaned down to retrieve their briefcases, rising to their feet with indulgent smiles, like they were doing Noah a great favor. “We’ll be just outside. There’s a lot to discuss, when you’re ready.”

When the door closed behind them, Noah turned immediately to Santana. “A government job? With, what, twelve hours notice?”

Santana glared, a gesture which would have looked defensive on anyone else but never could on her. “I called you half an hour after they called me, last night. I’m not so fond of the way they’re pushing themselves in, either, but you both know there isn’t much we can do about that.”

“It’s bullshit.”

“Half of what we do is bullshit, and the government backs all of it.”

“Yeah, only because they don’t know what _else_ to do with us, San.” Noah tossed the file onto the desk, where it fell open to the picture of the girl and lay still. “So now we’re going in for a job they don’t even need us for, on a few hours notice, just because they decided it’s time to remind us we’re not really in charge?”

“Yes.” Kurt ignored the look Noah shot him at his unexpected entrance to the conversation. “You’re right; it’s bullshit. But yes.”

“They don’t—”

Kurt gritted his teeth against the overwhelming desire to agree with him, because he _hated_ being bossed around like this, hated the way 99% of the officers they came in contact with assumed themselves to be automatically superior, but he kept that to himself. “Yeah, they do.”

One of them had to be the sensible voice, the grounding wire to keep them down. It had been Noah’s turn earlier that morning, insisting on having interactions with the rest of the world to keep them looking normal, but he had been walking around for a couple of hours now with electricity sparking his veins and his rationality was draining away, so Kurt took over. They had plenty of practice with that trade-off.

Santana leaned forward, catching Noah’s eye. “Look. I’m not arguing with you, okay? It sucks, but it’s not something we can ignore. So just do the job, get back, and then meet me and Brittany for lunch so we can bitch about their attitudes and laugh behind their backs. Got it?”

“It’s still bullshit,” Noah muttered, though he wasn’t arguing anymore. “Like they think this _means_ something.”

That was the government’s theory. They looked the other way when the jobs were illegal — which they were, more often than not — and agents took jobs for them whenever they asked. It was the closest thing they could find to control.

“It does mean something.” Santana smirked. “It means we are awesome. We can do awesome things, and they can’t. It means they’re scared of us. Which, actually, I kind of like.”

“Okay. Okay, fine.”

“Except for one thing, actually. We’re going to have to take a rain check on the lunch date, unfortunately,” Kurt said. “Noah and I have decided that a vacation is long overdue. We’ll be gone as soon as we’re done with this job.”

“Oh? How far gone?”

“Out of the country,” Noah replied. “Think we can skip the check-in this time so we can grab an early flight?”

“You know I don’t like—”

“ _You_ know that if we do come in that morning, there’s probably about a fifty-fifty chance you’ll come up with some reason we can’t leave. And we are leaving,” Kurt finished, and left no room for argument.

Rubbing her temple with two long fingers (perfectly manicured at one time, but just starting to chip by now, because she waited too long between appointments and didn’t really bother taking care of them anyway), Santana sighed. “Fine. Fine, you can… just call in or something. But I _do_ expect a call before you leave the country.”

“What, at four in the morning? No one’s working the desk that early.”

“So call my home number. Wake me up.”

“You know that’s totally not necessary, right? If something went wrong, you’d get a call from the government, the hospital, someone. It’s not like we’ll be alone. Ever.” Noah did not look pleased at that statement.

“I like hearing your voice, babe.” Santana winked at him, and Kurt couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes.

“Right, well, we’ll try to—” The door opened, cutting Noah off in mid-sentence as Agent Number Two walked back inside. He was nodding toward the phone pressed to his ear, and a moment later said a sharp goodbye before snapping the phone shut and turning toward them, just as Number One came in behind him.

Number Two scowled, both at the phone and at them where they were still sitting around the desk. “We’re changing up the schedule a bit. They found the building. We can go in tonight.”

“Tonight?” Santana arched an eyebrow at the man, leaning forward until her dark hair swept forward over her shoulder. “I don’t think I can approve that. We aren’t at all ready, and you only came to me last night.”

“It has to be tonight,” Number One insisted. “We were only waiting until we knew where the girl was, and now that we do, well… It would be very dangerous to leave her there for any longer than absolutely necessary. These are people capable of a great deal of violence.”

Santana’s eyes flicked down to the file laying on her desk, and Kurt knew what had drawn her attention. Blond hair, blue eyes, and a wide, bright smile… They were clearly different people, but this girl looked a little too much like the high-school-aged version of Brittany Pierce for Santana to be wholly comfortable with the situation. The biggest difference was their age, and the absence of a long, white scar running across the cheekbone of the face in the picture.

For all they knew, though, that could have changed by now. Kurt caught Santana’s eye and nodded, and did not miss the heavy breath the shuddered through her chest.

“Fine,” she said finally. “Let’s talk details.”

“We’d prefer it if we could discuss this with only those who will be joining us for—”

“Not an option.”

-

“Thank _God_ ,” Kurt moaned, voice muffled around the last bite of his egg roll. “It was so far past time for lunch.”

Noah just hummed his agreement until he could swallow enough to speak, tossing the empty bag into a trash can. “Thought they were gonna try to keep us there all day, right up until it was time to leave.”

“I was starting to seriously rethink the possibility of the existence of hell.”

Boarding the train was a very different experience now than it had been that morning. Now, with the energy of the sun reaching an equilibrium and his regular skin tone restored, Kurt was the one riding with confidence while Noah, nearly overflowing with excess electricity and trying his best to keep himself out of everyone’s way, was far less comfortable.

Luckily, this particular train wasn’t busy at this time of day. Noah stood at the end of the car, ignoring the empty seat next to a middle-aged woman who had smiled pleasantly at him and moved her bag to clear the space when he walked by.

“Play nice with the civilians, baby,” Kurt said when Noah coughed pointedly over the woman’s spoken offer and turned a full 180 degrees away. “Weren’t you the one talking about that, just this morning?”

“Pretty sure it won’t be considered ‘nice’ if I accidentally fry her brains,” Noah muttered.

“No, I suppose not.” Kurt frowned as he looked at Noah’s face more closely. The man’s jaw was clenched and bags tugged lightly at his eyes, but Kurt could have placed the blame solely on the aggravation of dealing with FBI agents if not for the tiny flecks of blue that were starting to appear over the brown of his eyes. That was never a good sign.

Noah shifted away from Kurt’s gaze and stared at a man who’d just entered the car and sat down a few feet away, sticking his foot out halfway across the aisle.

“Hey.” Kurt raised a hand to Noah’s face — _Too much too much, time to go home_ — and turned it back around. “Is it that bad?” He already knew the answer. Even if he couldn’t hear it in Noah’s mind, he could feel it in the tiny sparks that escaped into his hand. “We’ll be home soon. Unless… you want to save it for tonight?”

After a moment, Noah shook his head. “Probably gonna jump out of my skin if I wait until tonight to deal with it.”

“Okay. Well, twenty more minutes.” Kurt dropped his hand down, but took hold of Noah’s — _Weird day, weird job, wonder why they really wanted…_ — on the way. “Honestly? I’m kinda surprised they wanted us at all. I mean, for something this public? That girl’s face is all over the news. Sorry,” he added when Noah blinked in surprise. “It was right on top.”

Noah shook his head, chuckling a little — _Shouldn’t be surprised_ — and squeezing Kurt’s hand. “Shouldn’t be surprised, really. Just distracted.” The nice thing, Kurt decided, was that he could tell Noah meant it. Not to mention, if Noah had a problem with Kurt having access to, well, pretty much every thing in his mind, they wouldn’t have lasted this long. “Yeah, it’s weird. They usually want us for the quiet stuff. Reading tech. Or people. Whatever.”

“Even the bigger things, it’s never civilians. It _shouldn’t_ be regular people, right? Because we’re not.” Kurt sighed. “But I’m always a little surprised when they ask for us, considering how uncomfortable they all seem to be around someone who can find out everything about them with a touch.”

“‘Bout as uncomfortable as they are around a guy who can kill them with it, yeah. But they’re morons, and they need us.”

“Bet they’d need us less if they knew exactly how many ‘classified government secrets’ I’ve picked up. Or Mike. Or Jessica. Of course, their definition of ‘classified’ is a little off. Did you know that there’s been war in the Middle East? Because I think they hid that one pretty well.”

“Morons. I said so.”

“I think it’s less stupidity and more delusions of self-importance.” Kurt braced himself as the train ground to a halt two stations away from their stop. “If you can convince yourself you’ve been trusted with top secret information, your imaginary ranking shoots right up. God, it’s like high school all over again, with government intelligence in place of hookup records and a spot on the football team.”

Noah just rolled his eyes. “Think you’re throwing around the word ‘intelligence’ a little loosely, babe.”

“My _point_ ,” Kurt continued, lowering his voice a little further, “is that they have to know I get some of it, at least, just like they have to know that putting us on a case that most of the city has heard about is going to screw with them somehow. So why are they doing it?”

“Desperate, maybe.”

“Desperate to avoid having to kill criminals? That’d be a new one.” Kurt dropped the subject, though, when he felt a wave rise in Noah’s chest, and pulled him sharply away from the wall of the train.

Noah startled from the sudden movement, eyes darting around the car for a moment before settling on the spot he’d been moved from. “Damn. Was I feeding?”

“Not much, if you didn’t even notice it.” Kurt rubbed Noah’s fingers, pushing out a wave of CALM until he felt a sigh of relief shift the hand in his. “But I figured you might want to stop before you drained enough power to make the guys in charge start wondering.”

“Just what I need.” Noah glared at the lit-up map of stations, still not showing their stop. “More juice.”

“Almost home,” Kurt murmured.

Their straight shot home was interrupted, however, by a man standing at the door to their building, peering in through the glass.

“Finn?”

Finn whirled at the voice. “Kurt!” He jumped the three steps down to street level and practically leapt to wrap Kurt in a tight hug — _Couldn’t find you for hours, gotta get used to this city if I’m gonna be here for…_

“You know, you could’ve just called,” Kurt said when they broke apart. He was certain he was smiling ridiculously, but Finn was practically overflowing with positive emotions — _love_ and _joy_ and _haven’t seen you in way too long_ — and it spilled into Kurt. “It’s not like you don’t have my number.”

“Wouldn’t have been a surprise then, would it? Hey, Noah.” Finn nodded at Noah, who took the tinniest of steps back to avoid a handshake and greeted him in return. “Besides, brother’s privilege, right? I get to show up out of nowhere and have a place to stay for a couple days.”

“Just a couple of days? That’s a short visit, isn’t it?” It didn’t make sense, didn’t fit with what he’d gotten from Finn about staying for a while. Two or three days wasn’t a while.

“Well, no, it’s just… Just until my place is ready.” Finn grinned sheepishly.

“Your— Finn!”

“Surprise.” He shrugged, shifting the bag on his shoulder that Kurt hadn’t bothered to notice before. “Yeah, well, I’ve been looking around lately, ‘cause I’m kinda getting serious with Rachel, and I found a sub job I think I can turn into a full-time teaching position. And if not, I’ll look for another one.”

“Wow, that’s… Amazing.” Kurt laughed and drew Finn in for another hug — _Hope Rachel takes it this well_ — before pulling back in horror. “You haven’t told _Rachel_ , either?”

“Um, what? No? How did you know that?”

“Just, uh, figured. Since you hadn’t said anything to me, and I _am_ your only brother, you know.”

“Little brother.”

“Big brother.” Age mattered more than height.

“Step-brother,” Noah mumbled, but laughed when Kurt elbowed him in the side. “Okay, well. Gimme your bag, Finn. I’ll toss it inside and we can go grab lunch or dinner or whatever it’s time for.”

“Noah, we _just_ ate.”

“Yeah, but after the morning we had? You’re telling me you aren’t still hungry? Plus, Finn’s been looking for us; he probably needs to eat.” When he didn’t get a negative response from either of them, Noah carefully grabbed Finn’s bag without brushing his shoulder and walked toward the door. “Be a minute.”

“It’s like he never grew out of his teenage metabolism.” Kurt shook his head and turned back to Finn. “Seriously, you know Rachel’s going to wish you’d told her first.”

“Well, I did tell her I was coming up to visit. I just haven’t said it’s, you know, permanent.”

“Finn. When you say it’s getting serious…” They’d been dating for almost two and a half years now, ever since he’d very literally run into Rachel on the street while visiting the city, but it was always long distance, even if Finn’s profession meant he had plenty of free time in the summer to visit. Frankly, Kurt hadn’t expected them to make it this far. Maybe he’d have to put a little more effort into befriending the woman.

“I mean serious, yeah. Uh, might ask her to marry me, actually. That’s something I’m allowed to tell you first, right?” Finn, God help him, was actually _blushing_.

“Really?” Kurt said excitedly. “I get to help, right? You’ll need help planning? I haven’t gotten to do that since our _parents_ got married.” He would definitely need to see Rachel more often, now.

“Yeah, sure! But aren’t you gonna have stuff to do whenever you guys, you know… Aren’t you gonna do that soon? You’ve been living together for years.”

Kurt just shook his head, willing Finn to drop the subject without argument. He and Noah had talked about it, but marriage was a tricky business when it came to them; there were reasons why the rate was about five percent that of the general population. ‘Married’ meant something that dating just didn’t, and that distinction could be dangerous. Most people decided not to risk the association.

Not to mention that the government seemed to hate it when they tried.

“Oh, um. Is there a… problem?” Finn’s voice dipped on the last word, almost to a whisper, even though Noah was inside the building and two stories up, and no one walking by would think to listen.

Sometimes, Kurt thought it would have been easier to just tell Finn the truth, to tell him about what he did and why and be a little more specific than “Government work, but I can’t really talk about it.” That wasn’t an option, though. Appointed government groups had gotten very involved from the moment he’d pinged their radar, and had halted the flow of information. His dad knew — and worried — though his mother had died before they’d really understood what was happening, and that was it. A step-mother and brother from the time he was 16 were not close enough to warrant confidence, apparently, because by that age, he could hide it.

That was where the knowledge stopped: parents, siblings old enough to notice and understand, and sometimes — but not always — the people they chose to spend their lives with (kids were never part of any equation).

When he really thought about it, Kurt had no desire to expose Finn to the kind of professional attention he would receive if he knew. Noah had told Kurt the story of his father, who’d left home after the electrocution of the third family pet only to find himself hounded by people who wanted to make sure he wouldn’t spread the story, now that they couldn’t count on family obligations to keep him quiet. It got bad enough that the man had stopped at home several times over the next decade, always drunk and angry and demanding that Noah make it _stop_ , before they got a call that he hadn’t walked away from an accident on the highway.

No, Kurt would never have a good enough reason to bring any part of his lifestyle down on Finn’s head. Finn, who was just moving to the city and finding a permanent position and looking to start his own family. Kurt smiled and shook his head, and told Finn a tiny portion of truth. “No. No problem. We’re doing great, actually, just like this.”

“Well, good. ‘Cause I wouldn’t want to make it all awkward or whatever. Tall guy snoring on your couch when you two need to be talking about things.”

“Nope, not awkward. Our couch is totally open for— _crap_.” Kurt groaned, pressing a hand to his forehead to get his thoughts back in order. He _hated_ when this happened. He’d get so caught up in the influence from one mind that he forgot details that person didn’t know. It was only the minds he was most used to that could do that to him, Noah or Finn or his father, but it was annoying as hell. “Crap, I can’t believe I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” Finn was still glancing up at the building as though he expected Noah to appear in the window and glare at him for asking about their relationship. “You _are_ having a problem?”

“No, it’s just… Damn, I don’t know how I forgot. You can still stay here until you have your own place, but, uh, we won’t be here. We’re leaving tonight, taking a vacation for a couple weeks.”

“Tonight?” Finn’s eyebrows rose. “Wow, uh, bad timing on my part then. Did you already tell me about this and I totally forgot?”

Kurt shook his head. “It was a pretty sudden decision. We just booked a flight an hour ago.” Less, actually, but just after they got out of that damn meeting. A hand on Noah’s arm had kept the silent communication running, which helped them decide on a destination and ignore the third repetition of the schedule, all in one. “Out of the country.”

“Jeez. Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“Na, it’s cool. Not like I told you I was coming, either.”

“Like I said, you can still stay here. I mean, no one else will be around the apartment, but we have an extra key…” It might be a good idea to keep the apartment occupied, anyway. Did they have a plant? Maybe they had a plant to be watered.

“Actually, Rachel already offered to have me stay with her. Just figured I’d come see you ‘cause it’s been a while, but if you’re not in New York, then… Yeah, I’ll stay with Rachel. Dude, we can hang out when you get back,” Finn added, seeing the look on Kurt’s face. “No big deal. I’ll be in the city for, y’know, a while now, so we got time.”

“Alright.” Kurt almost wanted to cancel. They’d decided to go just this morning, so it wouldn’t be all that crazy to decide _not_ to in the afternoon. Except they needed this, Noah especially, and Kurt knew exactly how much. He didn’t get to see his brother enough as it was, but Finn was right. He’d be around. “We’re still going out to eat, though. We have a few hours.”

“Cool.”

“Hey.” Noah had emerged from the building and appeared next to them, minus Finn’s bag. “You guys decide where we’re eating, yet?”

“Got distracted.” Finn swung up a hand to rest on Kurt’s shoulder, his thumb barely brushing against the skin of Kurt’s neck. “Kurt was just telling me about how you two are taking off tonight.”

Noah nodded. “Iceland. Heard it was cool. And did you know they have a Museum of Dicks there?”

“Hmm. I doubt that’s _exactly_ what it’s called, Noah.”

“Whatever. So, food?”

“Yeah.” Finn paused. “Uh, we could do Indian?”

Kurt winced. Crap. He reached up and carefully removed Finn’s hand, placing it down by his side and taking a step back. “Finn,” he said slowly. “Don’t you hate Indian food?” Kurt was the one who liked it.

Blinking, Finn shook his head. “Oh, right,” he said after a moment. “Yeah, uh, weird. Maybe pizza then? I’ve been eating Ohio pizza for months and it’s just not as good as New York pizza. Hey, has anyone ever compared all the other states?”

Noah was staring at Kurt, but a quick glare had him turning around and answering Finn. “Well, I can vouch for Indiana pizza, man. Not so great. We’ll get you some of the good stuff, though.”

“Okay, good. Huh.” Finn was still blinking faster than usual, staring at a spot on the side of the apartment building. “Indian food. That was weird.”

There it was: the other, far more selfish reason why he would never tell Finn. Because Finn would undoubtedly wonder how many times Kurt had done something like that, accidentally pushing thoughts and feelings onto Finn or picking something up from his mind that Kurt shouldn’t have known, and the answer would always be ‘too many times.’ Because Finn would want to know whether Kurt had ever purposefully pulled away information, and the answer, with provisions that Finn might or might not be calm enough to consider, was ‘yes.’

Because Finn might ask whether Kurt had ever considered, back before they were anything like family, that he could _make_ Finn love him, and the answer was ‘just for a minute.’

Because Finn might stop smiling at him and calling him brother. Kurt didn’t feel bad for any of the dozens of times he’d touched a bully’s mind to keep himself safe or for the rearrangements he made on the job, but he _did_ feel guilty every time he couldn’t apologize for things Finn didn’t even register happening.

“Come on, then.” Kurt patted Finn’s sleeve, steering well clear of any bare skin. “Pizza’s this way.”

-

It was after seven by the time they got back to their apartment and waved Finn off with his bag and strict instructions on which train to take to get to Rachel’s. They were meeting those agents at 11:30.

“God, and we still need to _pack_ ,” Kurt groaned, staring at the clock in the hope that it would take pity on him and start ticking backward. “Remind me again why we took a job with twelve hours worth of notice?”

“Because no one’s ever bothered to test what happens when you turn down a government job and we’re not going to be the first to find out?” Noah suggested. “And because I’m pretty sure I’m actually going to explode if I don’t see some action tonight.”

Kurt glanced over at Noah, who was shifting uneasily in place. He could almost feel the agitation rolling off of Noah’s body… or maybe he really could feel it. There were times he wondered whether the connection they’d shared for years now had formed into something deeper, whether the contact had rubbed something of Noah onto him, because sometimes he didn’t need to touch Noah to know what he was thinking.

Or maybe he just knew him too well.

“‘Action’ as in later, with the FBI, or—” Kurt was cut off when Noah took two steps forward and crushed their mouths together, clutching Kurt’s waist and sending sparks into his body.

Kurt shivered at the way it all rushed through his skin. If he thought he could feel Noah from across the room… No, _now_ he could feel it, all the little bits and pieces of Noah’s mind, stray thoughts and ideas and _want_ and _release_ , all overlain with a pulse of electricity — the real kind, not some faulty metaphor to describe a first kiss — that made his head spin when he absorbed the power.

When they broke apart, he gazed critically up into Noah’s eyes, which were blown wide and half-blue by now. “You’re going to make me glow again, aren’t you? And right before we need to be invisible.”

Noah just grinned at him. “You always glow.”

“Cornball.” Kurt whacked him lightly in the chest, but didn’t try to stop himself from being pulled in close again, laughing against Noah’s lips at the feeling of electricity dancing across his skin.

  


-

  


  
**The Job**   


  


  


The problem with government jobs, Kurt remembered, rolling his head back as he tuned out the fifth run-down of checkpoints, was that they always expected you to work _with_ them rather than strike off on your own. That was why he was standing outside, staring up at the stars for lack of a better distraction and surrounded by guys in bulletproof vests.

And guns. There were a lot of guns.

He didn’t understand why they needed quite so many of them, to be perfectly honest. That was supposed to be the point of putting Noah and himself on the team, after all: to prevent a bloodbath. Yet he stood in the center of a large crowd of uniformed men, waiting for the go-ahead from ‘central,’ or whoever. If they had been left to themselves, he’d be halfway through the building already, with Noah right beside him.

That wasn’t the way things worked with the government, though, and it never would be. No, those ‘trained professionals’ had to supervise everything, had to make sure they had enough of a force that they could pretend they’d done the job themselves, even if it would be the two ‘freelancers’ out in front doing most of the work and never, ever being included in the report.

Still, this felt like an over-large group, to the point where Kurt had spent the first few minutes looking around for familiar faces. Not that he’d made many friends in the FBI (or the CIA or the local police force or whoever they happened to be working with on any given job; Kurt rarely paid attention, as any group that got to see them in action was inevitably referred to as a ‘special division’ of whatever program they originated from), but there had been a couple over the years, if only because he tended to work with the same people over and over, the ones who could tolerate him and didn’t freak out when he tried to touch them.

Dan Walters was one man Kurt could reliably say he enjoyed seeing, which was impressive considering the uniform and what it meant. Aside from him, and a couple more who would have warranted at least a brief acknowledgment, it was always a good idea to be aware of repeat coworkers. Most of them weren’t as pleasant when they heard about what he could do, and some of them held grudges. They couldn’t do much more than sneer at him when they walked past, but Kurt had long since learned not to rely on them for any sort of backup (though he generally looked no further than Noah when he needed that sort of help, anyway).

Everyone here looked new, though. Either he wasn’t finding people in the crowd, which wasn’t unlikely considering how little effort he’d put into it, or they were working with a different division than usual. That could be right. They’d never dealt with kidnapping before; those cases were too public.

“You recognize anyone here?” he said to Noah, turning away from the stars and flat-out ignoring the brief glare that his words, however quiet, earned him from the lecturing officer. The speech didn’t stop, though, and the man refocused on his peers instead; obviously, he was used to dealing with people like them and had long since learned to take what he could get.

“Na, was I supposed to?” Noah shrugged. “Didn’t really look around. Dan’s out with the new baby, anyway.”

“Right.” Kurt knew that. Okay, he hadn’t, but it had been months since he’d seen Dan, and back then he’d barely begun spreading the news of his wife’s pregnancy with a bright smile stretched across his face. Noah must’ve talked to him more recently.

Around them, groups of men huddled together to go over strategy one last time, or maybe they were finally splitting off into sections by now. Either way, the loud speech had given way to wave of muttering scattered throughout the crowd, which Kurt couldn’t help but find a little disquieting. The feeling was driven by accidental conditioning, he figured. Whispers and sideways glances weren’t usually positive signs, though if some of these people were new guys then it was only to be expected.

Above the muttering, rounds of clicks filled the air as the man all double-checked their large, unnecessary guns.

Guns. Pistols and semi-automatics and actual shotguns that would probably always look like they belonged in a zombie film no matter how many times Kurt saw them used practically. Lots and lots of nonessential weapons that made Kurt just a little nervous, because he was far more used to seeing them pointed at him than at his targets. Really, why did they need so much force when they knew full well it would be Noah and himself taking care of almost the entire operation?

Maybe it was a comfort thing, he considered, looking a little closer at the way some of the men were holding their guns a bit more tightly than necessary or _triple_ -checking that they were loaded correctly. Maybe it was knowing they had their own way to do something if the need came; God knew _he_ didn’t like relying on other people for things like this, either.

He had the advantage of having his own weapon with him wherever he went, invisible at all times (well, mostly; he was running hot tonight in preparation so his skin was probably a little less ‘bad tan’ and a little more ‘no, seriously, _orange_ ,’ but still generally unremarkable if you weren’t looking for it). The average man didn’t have that, so he carried a gun. Simple enough.

“God, we’re never going to get going.” Noah groaned, running a hand over the back of his neck before letting it drop heavily back down to his side.

“You might be right. Honestly? I know it’s supposed to be a big deal and there’s always delay on things like this, but… aren’t they worried about the girl?”

“Guess they figure nothing’s gonna change in the next hour.”

“Still.” Why leave her in there any longer than they had to? She was probably terrified. He would’ve thought they would adopt some sense of urgency for the situation, especially considering how focused they’d been on going in _tonight_ , but they seemed more concerned with making sure every single detail went as it was meant to.

Perhaps it made sense to think about those things, but in Kurt’s experience, plans tended to fly out the window pretty damn fast and if _they_ were the ones leading the group in, changes were practically guaranteed. Not that they’d appreciate him mentioning that.

“Think we coulda been done by now, K?” Noah asked lightly. They’d dropped the use of names as soon as they arrived. It wasn’t strictly necessary until they were inside the building, but getting in the habit never hurt. “We could be getting a burger.”

“I don’t know. Think they actually have accurate information on everything?”

“No.”

“Then, no,” Kurt said. “Probably would’ve gotten tripped up somewhere or other. Give us a few more minutes.”

“Damn. Now I really want that burger.”

“We could stop by Jake’s on the way back? Last bite of New York food before we leave the country?”

“Hell yes.” Noah grinned. “I _so_ need to be gone right now.”

“Is tomorrow soon eno—”

“Alright, let’s go!”

Kurt turned to see the man in charge waving at various groups, pointing them (finally) down the street.

“Oh, thank _God_ ” He tugged Noah’s arm to bring them to the front of the crowd that was now edging their way along sidewalks and down alleys, breaking off into groups that would fall into positions surrounding the building, if Kurt had heard correctly. That wasn’t really his problem.

His problem happened when they finally reached the targeted building, even less remarkable in person than in the pictures they’d been provided, with bricks that were chipped and crumbling away from walls. They stopped far enough away to duck against the loading dock on the building next door, and Kurt squinted through the dark to consider the state of their target. What kind of professional criminal associated himself with a place like this?

Then again, Kurt thought, if you kidnapped a girl then it was probably best not to keep her in your house, or really anywhere else you would normally visit.

“So, window?” He nodded at the one in the far left-hand corner of the building, three feet off the ground and cracked at the edges of the wooden frame. It was probably starting to rot and fall apart, which could only help. Kurt wondered again about the sensibility of holding a hostage in a building like this; surely they should have picked something at least somewhat defensible.

“Window,” Noah agreed. “See any cameras?”

“No.” But the fact that he couldn’t see them did not mean they didn’t exist. “Not much we could do even if they’re up there. We’ll be quick.” With that, he pushed himself off the wall and dashed for the window, Noah following close behind him.

He gave the window a cursory tug once he reached it, but it only jerked at one corner and didn’t lift, so he stepped to the side and let Noah through. Noah slid into place in a moment, already jamming a short shaft of metal into the bottom of the frame and shoving upward. In one sharp motion the wood cracked audibly and the window lifted free of its base.

Kurt scrambled in the open window after Noah, wincing at the scrape of his leg over the rough wood and at the echo of the sharp _crack_ that split the still air at its opening. Normally they would’ve gone for a more subtle entrance — usually an actual door or at least something a bit more high-tech that Noah could zap open quietly — but Agent… nope, still didn’t remember the name. The one who’d clearly spent good money on his suit and then paired it with cheap shoes that he didn’t even bother keeping nice, he had been very insistent about the window, and there was nothing remotely electronic about it. Thus, crowbar.

It was certainly effective, if cruder than their standard technique, and loud enough to have them dropping into a crouch on the other side of the window, still and listening carefully for any sort of alarm their entrance might have raised.

After several seconds in which nothing met their ears but silence, they stood, and Noah led the way to the door which _should_ (if police information was worth anything at all) lead out into a main hall.

“No lights,” Noah muttered, peering through the cracked-open door. “Weird.”

‘ _Easier, though_ ,’ Kurt thought as he located a light switch near the door and worked the cover out of the wall. The task was made easier by the state of the building, and soon enough the plastic pulled free of wood which had gone so bad that it was damp to the touch.

When the interior was exposed, Noah reached a hand into the hole and wrapped his fingers around a bundle of wires. Kurt moved to peek out the door rather than watch the jolt Noah sent through the system, searching for… There they were. Four little points of flickering light, blinking into existence and back out in a tiny blast of blue sparks. They formed a zig-zag path down the hall that ended with a corner.

“System’s hooked up pretty well for an old building,” Noah said quietly. “Should be good for most of this floor, at least.”

Time to go, then. Kurt led the way out the door, eyes darting around the empty hall. Left, they’d been told. Left, right, right, left, right, stairs. So Kurt turned left. He let his gaze trail along the top of the walls as he walked, curious about the kind of electronic defense that would have been placed inside such a poorly-chosen building, but couldn’t find anything even in places he knew he’d seen spark.

“N.” He pointed up at a blank spot on the wall. “No cameras.” None they could see, anyway.

Noah raised an impressed eyebrow. “High-tech. Thought these guys were supposed to be big on muscle, short on brains. How come we’ve only seen brains so far?”

Kurt didn’t answer until they’d rounded the corner and were met with nothing but darkness— still no live defense. “Upstairs, maybe?” Even as he said it, he acknowledged that he felt more than a little uneasy by the lack of people on the floor or even outside the building. Either they were very stupid or they were relying on something else, and Kurt knew better to trust the first option. The second opened up a can of very unpleasant possibilities.

He shook his head against the images and tried to peer deeper into the darkness.

A few more turns and nothing changed, and the little pit of unease in Kurt’s stomach grew until they rounded the last corner and ran into a wall several dozen feet in. He sighed softly and tabled his concerns for a moment in favor of complaining silently about the carelessness of federal officers, since he was more than a little annoyed at being led down the wrong path.

Noah’s thoughts weren’t kept quite as silent. “Could they _ever_ give us some accurate information? You think they sent us down a wrong turn back there or something?”

“Must be,” Kurt replied quietly. “I didn’t see anything along the way we came.” He didn’t turn around, though, just kept staring at the dead end that blocked their path. Tilting his head a little to squint through the darkness, he reached out a hand and ran it along the smooth surface. “Does this wall look… weird, to you?”

With a hand lit by sparks, Noah stepped forward next to him, casting a faint glow onto the wall. “Uh, not really?”

“It’s different.” Newer? This whole section of the building looked a little better kept than most everything else they’d seen so far. Maybe that meant they really were going the right way; surely people would gravitate toward the more stable portions of the building, or they might have even fixed it up themselves. Kurt edged himself carefully between Noah and the length of the hall. If they were going to be running into people soon, that meant it was his turn.

“So you wanna try one of these doors or you wanna just go all the way back to—” Noah cut himself off abruptly when Kurt laid a hand on his arm and squeezed gently. He just needed a moment to listen, because the wrong turn had him more on edge than ever when he stopped to think about it and it was still weird that no one was on the first floor and not all of those noises could be attributed to creaking wood in an old building and— There.

Kurt whipped around fast, jumping to meet the footstep he’d heard press against the floor a few feet behind him and grabbing a face hooded in shadows with one hand. He closed his eyes as a pulse ran down his arm and into an unfamiliar body, energy instinctively focused on a single thought: SLEEP. When he reopened his eyes, the faint orange glow — visible only because it was surrounded by almost total darkness — was already fading away, and the body slumped, lifeless, to the ground.

“K, what— Aw, _crap_ ,” Noah groaned as he caught sight of the man’s face in the beam of the flashlight he’d finally pulled out.

When his eyes stopped darting wildly around the hallway, looking for more men and finding nothing, Kurt glanced down and winced when he found the same thing Noah had: a man in full uniform, sprawled across the floor with a gun held loosely in his hand and a radio crackling at his belt. Someone shouted something unintelligible — probably a reprimand for breaking out of formation — and then it cut off, not even static coming through the speaker.

“Shit,” Kurt muttered. “What the hell was he doing? They’re supposed to be _backup_ ; we weren’t supposed to see them until the end!”

“Probably figured he was doing us a favor, coming out to point us in the right direction or something. Moron.” Noah sighed. “They shouldn’t bring new guys on these things. We gotta take care of this, now.”

“What’s that?”

There was another object on the floor next to the man, obviously dropped when he fell. Noah trailed the beam of light over the area Kurt pointed to, and a moment later a taser came into clear view. “The hell’d he need that for?” Noah raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the device. “They know the floor’s clean; they’ve been listening in the whole damn time.”

“No one’s coming to get him.”

The hallway was as still and silent as ever, and really, were they serious with this? A cop would break protocol to give them directions but not to collect someone who was… not injured, maybe, but certainly vulnerable. Unless they were pissed enough at Kurt to make him deal with it himself, but really, it was an _accident_ , and shouldn’t they care more about finishing this thing safely?

His eyes trailed back to the weapons on the ground, and Kurt’s eyes widened as little pieces clicked into place, rushing through his mind.

“N,” he said, voice rising in volume as he realized how much it didn’t matter anymore. “N, _move_!”

It was a testament to how long they’d worked together, or maybe to the layer of panic that edged its way into Kurt’s voice, that Noah jumped up without a second thought and tore after him down the hall. He knew the way back, or they could find another window, there were rooms all along the sides of the hall—

Their momentum took them about twenty feet toward the first corner before the world exploded with sound.

Bodies poured in from around the bend; Kurt couldn’t be sure how many, but in that dark, cramped hallway it felt like far too many and he lost track of numbers almost immediately, distracted by the yelling and the pounding feet and the way a door burst open beside him.

A body slammed into his from the side, sending him straight into the wall with a pained grunt, but he managed to bring a hand up to find bare skin and the next moment the weight was off him and the man was swinging himself back toward the crowd with a dazed look in his eyes. The nearest couple of officers — they _were_ officers, Kurt realized, gritting his teeth — yelled in shock at an assault from someone on their own side and went down fast, making way for Noah to run by.

His body was lit entirely with sparks, so completely that it could almost be mistaken for blue flames in motion. He didn’t pause for directed attacks, trusting the electricity to hit anyone close enough to touch as he dashed through the crowd.

Kurt pushed himself off the wall to follow, grabbing a pair of officers as he went and sending out a short pulse, which a moment later turned into a small pile of men scrambling with each other on the floor under Kurt’s direction. An arm flung out to grab at his leg as he passed, and he wasted a second pulling himself free, stumbling a few extra steps behind Noah as he tried to regain his footing and still attempting to count the number of men rounding the corner.

When shots fired in that cramped hallway, his first instinct was to duck to the side. His second instinct was to raise his hands to cover his ears, because _God_ that was a loud gun and in such a small space, but his arm had only risen a few inches before it was jerked back by a hard force that _burned_.

Whatever it was had him falling back into the wall, only several feet further along than the last impact and still nowhere near an exit, he noticed with a groan. There was so much noise. The shooting stopped as abruptly as it had started and more people were yelling over the stampede of footsteps and the collisions of bodies; he could pick Noah’s voice out of the din, but couldn’t tell whether it meant anger or pain.

He thrust an arm — not the one hanging oddly at his side — in the direction of the first man to get close to him, but his thoughts were jumbled and all he could manage was a simple message.

SLEEP.

The man collapsed, his fall synchronized with another officer several feet away who sizzled with electricity as he went down. Another face swam into Kurt’s vision — SLEEP — lit by the blue glow that washed over the hall, weaving in and out as the source moved.

A few more shouts — SLEEP — and it went dark. Kurt had a moment to wonder where it had gone, and whether his arm might be starting to sting, before something hard connected with the side of his head.

(Sleep.)

  


-

  


  
**The Government**   


  


  


“Hello? Noah?”

“…Santana?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Imagine that. You call my number and I pick up.”

“Wha’s goin’ on?”

There was a heavy sigh, crackling oddly right beside Noah’s ear. “Nothing. I’m just bitchy when you wake me up. I know, I know, I asked for this. No, it’s nothing.” The voice got further away for a minute. “Britt, go back to bed, it’s fine. Yeah. So I take it you made it through alright? I didn’t get any angry call from Agent What’s-His-Face, anyway, so it must’ve gone well.”

“Uh-huh.” He remembered breaking into a building, in through the window. That meant he did it, right?

“No serious injuries? No pissed-off cops or empty threats they’ll never bother carrying out?”

“I feel…” Weird. His head was pounding and something was trying to squirm its way out of his stomach. “Sick.”

“You’re slurring. Are you drunk, Noah?” A laugh. “Those FBI guys were _that_ bad?”

They… Someone hit him, he remembered. It hurt. “Assholes,” he muttered, unable to put anything more into words.

“Can’t argue with you, really. You two gonna be able to get on the plane like that? They don’t like drunk passengers, you know.”

Two? He was alone. “Kurt’s not h…” The rest of ‘here’ vanished into nothing on the way out of his mouth, gone in a soft sigh that he barely had the energy to support. He couldn’t form words anymore, but that wasn’t nearly as disturbing as the realization that Kurt wasn’t there. Where was Kurt?

“Oh, alright, as long as Kurt’s sober you should be okay, I guess.” That wasn’t what he said, was it?

“Kurt’s not—” He wasn’t just not drunk; he wasn’t _here_. That was definitely more important.

“Right, I know. Kurt’s the bestest boyfriend ever. Let’s his man get wasted then carries him onto the plane and gets them the hell out of this country. How come he didn’t make the call? Seems like that would’ve been easier.”

“I, uh…”

The voice laughed again. “Should know better than to try making you think when you’ve got alcohol in you. Whatever. Have fun wherever you’re going. We’re gonna talk about more than just the FBI when we have lunch, alright?”

Noah hummed something in response. He didn’t really care about this woman anymore; he had to find Kurt.

“Noah…” He tried to pull more than one thought into place at once, but they slipped away. “You _are_ okay, right? Kurt too? Because you don’t usually get drunk for no reason, and I know you were pissed off about this job, but maybe I should talk to Kurt for a min—”

“Noah?”

At the sound, Noah jerked up, but he didn’t get very far. That meant… something was holding him down. But that was _Kurt_ , and he’d heard him. Kurt was here?

“Never mind, I hear him. I’m gonna let him take care of you, then. See you in a couple weeks. Let me know as soon as you’re back in the US, okay?”

The phone — there had been a phone by his ear, he realized — vanished, and he craned his head up into the newly-empty space and squinted in the direction he’d heard the voice. “Kurt?” he said, as strong as he could (which wasn’t very), and then again, “Kurt?”

His head pounded harder, though, and there was something on his arm, and he forgot to listen for an answer.

-

The problem, Noah thought, was that he couldn’t fucking _focus_ on anything.

-

Oh _God_. His head should never have been allowed to hurt this much. It made for that awkward sort of state in which he tried his best to remember what had happened, but the injury itself made him far too confused to figure it out.

His brain was scrambled, and every time he squinted open his eyes the light only made his head pound harder, so he gave up on trying to get any starting information and just sat up, hoping that having his feet on the floor would ground him. The moment he forced his body upward, however, he collided with something hard that lay directly above him and he found himself falling right back down, gasping and clutching at his head.

Oh, he’d been wrong. He had been so freaking wrong when he’d complained about the pain a minute ago, because this was ten times worse. His hands scrambled over his scalp, over the barely-there layer of hair and… cloth? Something soft was wrapped over his forehead and around the back. Bandages?

Noah choked out a soft groan as the ache rose and fell in short waves, draining away a little more every time but not nearly fast enough for his liking.

“Sorry about that.”

The voice, the first noise he had heard that hadn’t come from his own movements, startled Noah so much that he almost jumped headfirst into whatever he’d run into before, but he caught himself just in time and jerked to the side to compensate. Unfortunately, this took him over the edge of the surface he’d been lying on, and he fell hard onto the floor. The impact was jarring, but he forced himself to sit up and face the source of the apology.

A man was standing a few feet away behind a row of metal bars, smiling sympathetically down at him. “We would have given you something for the pain, but doctors are always wary about mixing that sort of thing with head injuries and, well, we’d already had an argument over the sedatives. I thought it would be better not to push them.” No, that was wrong. _Noah_ was the one on the wrong side of the bars, not this man, who kept on speaking as if to a familiar acquaintance rather than someone crumpled on the floor of some kind of cell. “Maybe now that you’re awake they’ll reconsider.”

“Wha—” Noah pinched the bridge of his nose to stop himself from shaking his head on instinct, trying to organize his thoughts. “Who’re you?”

“Name’s Carl Jensen, Agent Jensen if I’m being formal. I work with a certain division of the federal government whose name wouldn’t mean much to you. You’re Noah Puckerman, of course. And that,” he said, eyes leaving Noah for the first time as he pointed at what Noah realized was a bunk-bed next to him and against the wall (so that’s what he’d hit his head on), “is Kurt Hummel.”

‘ _Shit._ ’ Noah pushed himself off the floor, stumbling a little as he landed on his feet and catching his balance on the edge of the bed frame. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten to look for Kurt until now — he’d blame the apparent head injury for that one — but there he was, lying still in the middle of the top bunk.

“Kurt.” Noah reached out to place a hand on Kurt’s shoulder, barely restraining himself from shaking the man when he saw the dark purple bruise that stretched across Kurt’s temple and disappeared into his hairline. Probably better not to jerk him around, then. “ _Kurt._ ” His voice didn’t seem to be doing anything, though.

“He’ll be fine,” Jensen offered helpfully from his position in the center of the hall running alongside the little room. “You’re heavier than he is, you know? Clears the drugs out of your system a bit faster. Give him a few minutes.”

His voice was already getting on Noah’s nerves, making him grit his teeth with every word, even though Noah knew, logically, that he shouldn’t be wishing Jensen would leave. He should be talking to him, trying to figure out why they were in an isolated room — which, upon closer inspection, was bare except for the beds and a paired toilet and sink against the far wall which he was pretty sure he would _never_ be desperate enough to use — or what kind of drugs Jensen was talking about, exactly. He didn’t want to, though; he just wanted to punch the guy in the face, and his head was still pounding too hard to focus on more rational thought.

He should wake up Kurt. Kurt was better at this stuff.

Noah blinked hard to force the lingering gray out of his eyes. Kurt was wearing a thin, white t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that Noah didn’t think he would ever put on voluntarily, and when he looked down at his own body, he found that he matched. For a moment, he felt inexplicably embarrassed at the comparison with Jensen’s black suit, but then he remembered about a thousand reasons why that was fucking stupid, not least of which was the fact that this guy was probably the reason they were dressed like that in the first place.

When calling Kurt’s name still failed to rouse him, Noah moved his hand to Kurt’s forehead and, ignoring Jensen’s repeated reminder that it would only take a few more minutes, let out a small shock of electricity. Used on anyone else, it would have been dangerous, and so Noah had to swallow down the automatic jolt of guilt that had no place there, but Kurt just scrunched his eyes tight in confusion and then opened them.

“Noah?” he mumbled, blinking rapidly at the face above him. “Wha’s hap’ning?”

“Hello.” Fuck, Noah already hated that voice. “Agent Carl Jensen.”

“What?” Noah had to hold tight to Kurt’s shoulder to stop him from falling off the bed when he jolted at the third voice.

“With the government.”

“Ohhh God,” Kurt moaned quietly, dropping his head into his arm and grimacing, as though trying to hold in the contents of his stomach. Noah knew the feeling.

A second later, Kurt was pushing himself up to sit on the mattress, arms shaking with the effort, and it was only Noah’s grip that kept him from collapsing forward when his left arm gave out. “You should probably just lie down,” Jensen was saying while they shifted. “Bullet wounds are a bitch. I know.” Noah glanced down at Kurt’s arm. Sure enough, there was a white bandage high up near his shoulder, partly disguised by the t-shirt but made more distinct by the spot of blood that was starting to seep through the layers.

“You _shot_ him?” Noah couldn’t remember that. Had anyone else been shot? _Was_ there anyone else? No, wait, they’d been on a job; he remembered that much. So it was just him and Kurt to worry about, because they’d been alone. Good. That was more than enough.

“It wasn’t the plan.” Jensen sounded almost defensive, and Noah wondered what was going on in his brain that he could shoot at them, lock them in a cage, and then act _sorry_ about it. “Someone panicked. If it makes you feel any better, you killed the guy who did it. Stopped his heart, and eight more.”

“Good,” Noah muttered.

“It isn’t.” Agent Jensen frowned, eyebrows pulling together and turning his expression dark for the first time since they’d woken. “All told, you two put eleven men in body bags. There’s nine more in the hospital, and two of them are going to be lucky to last the night. All you’ve done is rack up a longer list of charges. Not used to being held accountable, are you?”

“Well I guess that’s what happens when you tell guys you need their help and then _attack_ them when—”

“We did no such thing. You two, on the other hand, resisted arrest, which is bad enough without adding murder to—”

“Arrest?” Kurt was sitting up on his own by now, and although he didn’t look entirely steady, he flinched away when Noah’s hand came near his arm again. Noah pulled back, wincing as he realized that the contact would be forcing the pain in his head and the ache of his body into Kurt’s mind, which had plenty to deal with on its own. “To arrest someone, I think you have to _tell_ them, not just assault them in a dark hallway with no warning. From behind.”

“And you need something to arrest people _for_ ,” Noah added. “We weren’t doing a thing, ‘cept what you guys asked us to.”

“It’s what you’ve _been_ doing for years that’s the problem. We’re not going to be looking the other way any longer.” Jensen’s eyes narrowed. “You are very dangerous people.”

Kurt stared back at him coldly. “Thanks.”

“If you think that was a compliment, you obviously haven’t figured this out yet.”

“‘This’ isn’t anything. You can’t hold us. Nothing is legal about this, and we have people who’ll notice we’re missing.” Kurt’s fingers twitched, and Noah knew he was itching to be close enough to Jensen to reach out and figure this all out for himself, but the man obviously knew what he was doing and stayed a few feet back from the bars at all times.

“Common good takes precedence,” Jensen replied. “And actually, you don’t. You’re on vacation, remember? Phones off the hook.”

“Santana—”

“Got her call.” What the hell did that mean? Jeez, if he could just remember _anything_ after finding that dead end in the hallway and some kind of fight… “This isn’t just about you two, you know.”

Noah couldn’t stop the shiver at his words. That sounded bad. How many of their friends were going to get cornered in abandoned buildings before someone could figure out what was happening? He might have given in to his relief a little early. If this was as big as it was starting to look, they weren’t the only ones to be concerned about.

“So what happens next?” Kurt’s voice was sharp even as he leaned heavily against the wall to keep himself upright.

“Next? I go pick up my kid from hockey practice. And you should probably see the doctor.” He gestured in the direction of Kurt’s arm, where the bandage looked a little bloodier than the last time Noah had checked, then turned abruptly and walked off.

“Hey,” Noah called after him, but he was ignored. “Hey!”

“I think he’s gone, Noah.”

Turning back at Kurt’s gentle reminder, Noah couldn’t help but focus on the blood. “Are you okay?” he asked, before he realized that was a ridiculous question and added, “You’re bleeding.”

“So are you.” Kurt’s eyes flicked up to Noah’s head, where, he remembered, a bandage covered a thick strip of skin, and probably made him look like an idiot. Head wounds were not nearly as badass when they were being taken care of properly. He raised a hand to his forehead and felt around for the cloth, probing it with fingers that didn’t hurt and came away clean. He raised a questioning eyebrow at Kurt, who shook his head. “Around the back. I saw it when you turned away.”

Oh. More carefully this time, because he had not forgotten the splitting pain when he’d first woken up and cracked his head into the bed frame, Noah reached up to touch the area Kurt had indicated. He winced when he hit a spot somewhere above and behind his right ear, and this time his fingers came back tinged with red.

“Guess he meant it about seeing that doctor.” Noah glanced back at Kurt’s arm for a moment and _hoped_ he’d meant it. “You think they’ll actually do that for us?”

Kurt shrugged heavily, as if it was barely worth the effort it took to form the motion. “They took care of us once already. Why wouldn’t they do it again? Besides, Jensen, at least, seems to feel he’s being very humanitarian about all this.”

There it was again. ‘This.’ Except they didn’t know what ‘this’ was.

“Do you have any idea what the fuck is going on here?” Maybe Kurt hadn’t been able to get ahold of Jensen and find out for certain, but he was better than Noah at reading body language and tone even without the whole telepathy thing.

“Honestly? No. But I’m not sure they do, either. If they knew what to do with us, they would’ve done it, or told us what was going to happen. There’s no reason not to, especially since they’ve convinced themselves that they’re working mostly within the law.”

“This doesn’t seem very legal to me.”

“No, but it’s close enough to an arrest that they can tell themselves that’s what it is. It’s abnormal, but it’s not like they tossed us in a back room or shot us— well, not to kill, anyway.” Kurt gestured to the room around them. “This is a jail cell. They gave us medical attention. He’s speaking in legal terms.”

Great. That sounded harder to argue against. “There’s no way they can pull off any kind of trial, not without having to explain everything and admitting they supported all the shit we did. So, what, their plan is to just leave us in here until they come up with something by themselves?”

“They don’t know what they’re doing,” Kurt repeated.

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Kurt didn’t seem to have an answer for that, and waited a minute — which Noah spent edging back and forth along the bars, hoping someone would come by so he could talk to them and feel like at least _something_ was happening — before speaking up again.

“How long do you think we’ve been here?” Kurt asked, voice strained in a way that made Noah wonder whether it had been carrying that note the whole time, but softer.

When Noah glanced back, Kurt was fidgeting sluggishly where he sat, eyes darting around the room and cast into shadow by the overhead light— Oh. Noah swallowed uncomfortably when he realized why they needed a bright lamp when it had to be at least morning, if not the middle of the day, depending on how long they’d been out: there were no windows in the room.

Logically, that probably made sense. If you wanted to keep two grown men with powers like theirs in a room, you had to lock that room up as tight as possible, and cutting off all exits but one was definitely a way to do that. It shouldn’t have been a problem, except that it was, because one of those two men needed sunlight every morning, and he wasn’t getting it.

The shaking in Kurt’s arms and the paleness of his skin — which Noah had assumed was because of the bullet wound, or maybe the bruise on his temple — suddenly took on a new context.

“Shit,” he said, before he could think of anything else. “Shit, are you okay?”

“I don—” Kurt cut himself off when the door abruptly slid open with a loud grinding noise, guided by a man dressed in what looked like some kind of black hazmat suit that covered every inch of his body. Noah reluctantly turned away from Kurt to face him, feeling his heart sink just a little as he did so, because Kurt’s answer, whatever it was going to be, wasn’t ‘Yes.’

Noah could remember exactly three times in his life that he had heard Kurt answer that question with anything other than a roll of his eyes and a short “I’m fine, Noah; stop worrying.” To Kurt, admitting that he wasn’t okay meant a lot more than that.

It was this thought that made Noah move immediately when asked, stepping aside so Kurt had room to stand and keeping a hand on his back while they walked, because Kurt had been right. Whatever government organization these people were with — probably something that didn’t technically exist — they were working on the concept that they were essentially doing the right thing here. They’d offered medical attention and seemed to imply more; maybe they would realize that, for one of them, this should include sunlight.

A different room could mean windows.

His faith didn’t run so deep, however, that he didn’t notice there were only two men (or women; really, he couldn’t tell under those suits) in sight. He could feel the electricity running through him, maybe not as strongly as it would have if he were feeling healthy, but strong enough for this. When a gloved hand reached out and clamped over his arm, Noah sent a shot of power into the contact.

Nothing. The man didn’t even seem to notice.

He probably should have expected that when he saw the suits, Noah realized. The material felt rubbery against his skin, obviously made to be resistant to electricity and to cover the men entirely from any contact from either of them. Maybe these people weren’t sure what to do with them from this point on, but they’d obviously put a lot of thought into how to keep them there.

Kurt tripped over nothing twice before they turned a corner, only saved from falling by Noah’s firm grip, and Noah hoped they weren’t going far. Thankfully, they were directed toward a door just a few feet down from that turn. When the door swung open, Noah was a little less grateful, because he still couldn’t see any windows.

There was, however, what looked like a cross between a standard doctor’s office and a hospital room, though it was larger than either would normally be. It looked clean, with two of those semi-comfortable exam tables covered in protective layers of paper, and cupboards lining the walls, all of it lying lower that Noah would have expected. As they entered, someone greeted them with an energetic “Hello!” and Noah looked down to find a man who looked both friendly and unintimidating — which was a nice change — smiling at them from his seat in a wheelchair.

He had the same black suit that the others did, but it only covered up to his neck and Noah could actually see his face, complete with a pile of brown hair and thick glasses. “I have a hood,” the man explained, “but I see better without it covering my face. I’m going to assume you would rather have my help than try to kill me.” Especially, he didn’t say, because the other men in the room _were_ wearing hoods, and they also carried guns.

Noah looked over him critically. “You’re the doctor?”

“I’m Artie Abrams,” the man corrected. “But yeah, that’s Dr. Abrams. So who’s first?”

“Him.” Noah pushed Kurt forward gently, ignoring the glare he got in return even as Kurt settled onto the table. The paper crunched audibly beneath him, and for a moment it felt so much like taking his little sister to the doctor’s office for a strep check that Noah had to fight back the urge to laugh.

Maybe his head was more screwed up than he’d thought, because he wasn’t reacting to a lot of things like he should, today.

“Bullet wound. Right.” Dr. Abrams shoved his glasses further up on his nose and leaned in to pick up Kurt’s left arm, turning it over and back to look at the blood on the bandages. He frowned. “It shouldn’t be bleeding this much; I’ve already stitched it up. You didn’t pull at it or bang it around, did you?”

“I only just woke up.”

Abrams hummed thoughtfully, eyebrows pulling together. He pulled at one end of the roll and began to unwrap the cloth, slowing his pace a little when he got to the last layers and Kurt winced at the tug against his skin. “Sorry.” Abrams smiled sympathetically when he peeled the last of it away from where it had stuck to the drying blood on the edges of a small wound.

There were stitches holding it partially closed, but some of them had been split apart and blood was seeping out from the gap. Noah wasn’t sure what they could’ve done to cause that; Kurt had barely moved since they woke up. The most he’d done was walk down the hall, and that was long after the bandage had started to turn red.

“I _told_ them to be careful,” Abrams muttered, and oh, that made sense. Noah couldn’t imagine that dumping them on those beds had been much of a procedure. “How’s your head feeling, by the way? And yours, Noah?”

“It’s alright.” Which meant that it wasn’t as bad as his arm, right.

“Not so bad as it was before,” Noah added.

“Are you feeling dizzy or nauseous?”

Noah shook his head (his stomach rolled in protest, but it wasn’t anything unmanageable). When Kurt tried to do the same, the motion nearly toppled him to the side, and Noah moved quickly to sit next to him and hold him upright. “A little dizzy,” Kurt admitted. No shit. “But that’s probably not from my head.”

“It’s pretty common, actually. What else would you think it would be?” Abrams had abandoned Kurt’s arm for the moment, staring up at him and giving him the kind of ‘I’m the doctor so I know best’ look that Noah had always found immensely annoying.

“Just haven’t gotten any sun today.” Kurt shook his head again as he spoke, more gently this time, as though trying to clear out the dizziness. “That’s what happens.”

“Really?” Abrams looked excited now, and he seemed to have completely forgotten the bullet wound. “You need sun? They didn’t tell me that.” He reached down to the side of his chair and grabbed a clipboard that hung there, pulling it up to make a note. “Is it a chlorophyll thing? Do you really _need_ it or… Your eyes are green, right? So it could be—”

“Not a chlorophyll thing,” Noah interrupted, before Abrams could get too far into it. “He’s not a damn plant. And his eyes are blue. Look, can you just fix his arm? And, um.” He glanced around the room, lingering on the guards behind them before turning back to Abrams. “Is there any chance he could _get_ some sunlight? There aren’t any windows around here.”

Just as Noah’s had done, Abrams’ eyes flicked back to the men before answering. “Well, they didn’t mention anything to me, but I don’t think—”

“No.” Noah nearly jumped at hearing one of those men speak for the first time. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected — maybe something along the lines of a Darth Vader voice or something else fitting for a man obscured by a dark suit that blocked attacks — but it wasn’t for the guy to sound normal. “They said we can’t. Dunno why.”

“Sorry,” Abrams said again, and Noah wondered whether he really meant it or just had very good bedside manner. They taught doctors that kind of shit, right? “Alright, yeah. Let’s do the arm. I think I’m just going to have to re-stitch it; most of these have been torn, anyway, and it’s practically a fresh wound.”

When he took the rest of the string out, sliding it away from Kurt’s arm and letting the wound fall further open with each movement, Noah had to look away. He wasn’t normally squeamish about this stuff, but the sight of all that blood and the layers under the skin that he knew had to be fat and muscle had his stomach rolling. Maybe he did have some nausea left over from that hit to the head, or maybe it was the whole situation that had him feeling sick.

Abrams paused his work only once, when several notes of a tinny rap song echoed from inside his suit, and he sighed briefly before going back to Kurt’s arm, muttering about how he’d get it later and how he should really start remembering to leave his phone on the counter instead of in his pocket when he was wearing this thing. “I’ve got to be able to pick it up,” he was saying. “I keep weird enough hours as it is.”

Kurt hissed lightly as Abrams cleaned the wound out and started to stitch it up again, but by the time it was done, his arm looked almost normal again, except for the stark line cutting across a small section of his pale skin.

“Actually, you’re kind of lucky. I mean,” Abrams corrected immediately when he saw Noah’s incredulous expression, “lucky for a guy who had to get shot. It was pretty clean, and I got all the pieces out no problem.”

“Pieces?”

“Of the bullet.”

“Oh. Right.”

Gee, Noah really _felt_ lucky.

Abrams wrapped Kurt’s arm in a clean bandage, securing it tight and reminding him not to bang it around or his stitches would tear again, and then handed him a plastic bottle of bright yellow liquid and told him to drink it. Kurt took a careful sip and then pulled away, blinking at the bottle in his hand. “Gatorade?”

“Yep. Unless you wanna be on an IV drip.”

Kurt took another drink.

“So.” Abrams turned to Noah, apparently satisfied enough to move on to the next task. “Do you want to stay here or move—”

“I’m good here.”

“Okay. Turn around.”

Noah’s turn was easier, since the blood was really just leaking from a few nasty scratches. He didn’t need stitches, never had needed stitches, just cleaning and a fresh bandage which, Abrams mentioned, he wouldn’t even need in a day or two. The key was to not knock his head into hard surfaces, as it turned out. Abrams touched him only with gloved hands and so he neither noticed the static nor asked a hundred questions about it, thank God.

Soon enough, they were being cheerfully waved off down the hall and then deposited back in the room with the door sliding shut behind them.

“Huh.” Kurt stared down at the bottle he held, still half-full of neon energy drink. He shrugged and took another sip, slumping where he sat on the bottom bunk. “That was weird.”

“Yeah, it was. I dunno, he _seemed_ like a nice guy.”

“Probably was.”

Noah didn’t really have the energy to sort through statements like that, though, and Kurt clearly didn’t either, since his drink was slipping right out of his slack fingers. Stooping low, Noah caught it before Kurt’s grip failed and set it off to the side.

“’M tired.” Kurt’s voice trailed off into nothing, his eyes already closed.

“Yeah okay. We’ll, uh. Figure it out later.”

‘ _Except later_ ,’ he realized, guiding Kurt down until he lay flat on the mattress, on his right side to keep pressure off the bandage on his left arm, ‘ _Kurt will be less coherent, not more._ ’ Technically, he didn’t know exactly what would happen. He’d never seen Kurt go without sunlight.

“Hey, Kurt.” He couldn’t help it; dark thoughts seeped in easier when he was locked in a tiny room. Noah shook at Kurt’s shoulder until he heard a mumble, just to keep him awake for another minute. “How bad does it get, without the sun?”

Kurt just sighed and shuffled his head a little deeper into the pillow.

Noah swallowed. “Yeah. Okay.”

A thought shivered and squirmed its way into his tired mind. ‘ _You killed nine people_ ,’ it said, and then it was shouted down by another thought: ‘ _You should have killed more._ ’ He let them battle it out between themselves, though, because he couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the argument just now.

Briefly, he considered taking the top bunk, but he didn’t really think it would make a difference, so he just shifted Kurt over a little toward the wall and lay down beside him.

-

Awkward shuffling and the sound of someone clearing their throat woke Noah from a very odd dream. Something about robots and a world-renowned pastry shop, but he couldn’t remember. He looked around blearily and started to sit up, but reminded himself at the last minute why that was a bad idea and avoided another collision with the bed frame.

Twisting his head to look behind him, he found one of the guards standing by the door, holding something in his hands that Noah couldn’t quite focus on until he’d blinked several times to sweep out the layer of drowsiness.

“Hey. I have food for you guys if you’re, y’know, awake.”

With the lingering nausea finally cleared out by sleep, food sounded kind of awesome just then. Noah worked himself carefully out of bed, untangling his leg from where it had wrapped around Kurt’s and ducking low until he was safely out in the open. “Thanks,” he said when the tray slid through a thin opening in the bars, because he couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to. The voice was the same one that had spoken before, the normal-sounding one that felt so out of place coming from within a suit that covered every inch of skin.

“You’re welcome,” the man replied, his tone so enthusiastic that Noah couldn’t help but imagine a bright smile stretching his face under the hood of the suit.

The food didn’t look half-bad; it was pretty normal, actually, two meals that looked like they could’ve been either lunch or dinner squeezed onto a single metal tray. A couple of water bottles were passed through next, and the man mentioned that he’d take it back when they were done. Noah set it all on the floor near the bed and knelt down to shake Kurt awake.

“Kurt. Kurt, wake up.” Kurt didn’t offer any response, not even a twitch of his eyelids, and Noah had to take a deep breath before he tried again. “Kurt.”

“Is he okay?”

Noah shot a glare over his shoulder at the man’s continued involvement. “He’s fine,” he said, but it turned into, “Please wake up,” when he looked back at Kurt.

“He doesn’t look fine.” Noah had to fight not to yell at the guy to just shut up already. He hadn’t been angry a minute ago, but Kurt’s closed eyes were making him more than a little twitchy. “Does he need something, or—”

“Not unless you can knock a hole in the wall and make a window,” Noah shot back, not bothering to turn around.

“Right.” The man cleared his throat awkwardly. “It’s actually after sunset, anyway.”

Spurred on by the knowledge that they’d been there for a whole day by now, or close to it at least, Noah shook Kurt’s shoulder one more time and was relieved to finally see a reaction. Kurt’s eyes scrunched tight before his face relaxed again, and Noah thought for a moment that he’d just gone right back to sleep, but then his eyes slid open and he blinked up at Noah’s face above him.

“Noah?” he mumbled. “What time s’it?”

“9:30,” the man offered helpfully.

“Yeah, thanks.” Maybe he would leave them alone, now.

Kurt wasn’t sitting up, but he was looking around the room and he at least looked like he knew what was happening. “Oh, right.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight before opening them again, taking a deep breath. “I remember. It’s still today, right?”

“Yeah. And we got food.” Noah pulled the tray up from the floor and placed it on the bed, followed by the water bottles, then tried to help Kurt up. Kurt batted his hands away with a roll of his eyes, but it took him a couple of tries before he managed to sit himself up against the frame of the bed. When he looked stable, Noah handed him a roll from the tray, probably the easiest thing for him to eat right now.

After staring at the bread distrustfully for a few moments, Kurt relented and took a small bite. “Tastes normal. Whatever. If they want to drug us, they’ll find a way to do it anyway.” Noah seconded that thought, mostly because he was hungry.

It turned out that Kurt couldn’t eat very much — even though really, Noah thought he should be eating more, not less, if he was feeling weak already — but Noah wouldn’t let him go to sleep until he’d drunk the entire bottle of water and the rest of the Gatorade from earlier. Kurt didn’t argue; he looked uncomfortable with the idea of falling asleep at all.

“9:30,” he was saying. “I don’ remember most’f today already. If I go t’sleep I’m gonna miss things hap’ning.” His eyes were sliding closed, though, and every other word was slurred.

“It’s night. You’re not going to miss anything important.”

“S’all important.”

“I’ll watch out, then.”

“Mmmkay.” Kurt went still on the bed.

Noah gathered up the tray and the empty bottles and passed them back to the man waiting on the other side of the bars. “Can you really shoot electricity at people? They told us to wear the suits, but…” Noah ignored him.

Briefly, he considered the rising need in his bladder, but he really didn’t want to use a toilet that looked like that one did until he had to. He hadn’t looked too closely, but there was a chance something might actually be growing there, or maybe he just thought it looked awful because everything was making him twitchy by now. Either way, it would probably be easier to do it in the middle of the night, when it was dark enough that he wouldn’t have to see the rust.

-

It had always been Kurt’s thing, not his, so Noah hadn’t realized until now just how accustomed he was to waking up in time with the sun.

The first few times Kurt had started moving around the room at five AM on a summer morning when they had literally nowhere to be, Noah had grumbled at him and thrown pillows until Kurt took his enthusiasm somewhere else. Eventually, though, he’d gotten used to the schedule. The fact that Kurt never had more energy than he did first thing in the morning, and that it didn’t take much to persuade him to come back to bed with it, was pretty motivating.

Today, Noah woke up when he rolled too close to the edge of the bed — it really wasn’t big enough for two people, but he had already decided not to care — and nearly went to the floor. A falling sensation worked its way into his dream, making his stomach drop out and his body jump backwards, barely avoiding the edge. He groaned and rubbed a hand over his face, annoyed at the very sudden jerk into reality.

Kurt was still lying next to him, barely moved from the position he’d fallen asleep in last night.

Swinging his feet onto the floor, Noah stretched into the open space and wished there was a clock in the room to tell him what time it was. He felt unsteady, knowing so little. At least having a sense of time would be something.

Noah glanced to the side, wondering if either of the men sitting outside the room was the same as the one who’d offered him the time yesterday. It might be worth a shot. On the other hand, if it was the same guy, he’d probably never shut up. Still, he really wanted to know.

“Hey. What time is it?”

“Uh.” One of the men pulled a radio off his belt and glanced at the screen. “10:45.”

Noah swore under his breath. It shouldn’t have been that big a deal, but he hadn’t woken up that late in years. He figured it made sense, with how much trouble he’d had sleeping last night, but it still felt more than a little weird.

Unsurprisingly, he’d been right about the guy not being able to mind his own business.

“So, we were supposed to bring you breakfast like three hours ago, but you were asleep. I could probably still get it…”

“Na, forget it.” If it was that late, they might as well just wait for lunch, though Noah wasn’t sure he’d feel like eating by then, either. The nausea was back, turning his stomach over and over where he sat. “You got water?”

“Yeah.” The man pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against and walked off, out of sight. He returned a minute later with two bottles of water, and Noah hauled himself off the bed to take them. Just the first sip made him feel a little better, and he downed half the bottle before he bothered to move away from the bars. Before he could go far, the man called after him. “Does he normally sleep that much or is that the sun thing?”

Noah took another sip of water.

“Are you just going to ignore me?”

Noah sighed. This guy wasn’t going to let it go without an answer. “Look, I’m sure you’re a cool guy or whatever,” or not, because, well, he’d chosen to do _this_ with his life and that didn’t earn him many points in Noah’s book, “but I’m not super excited about having a conversation with someone who’s keeping me in this room with a gun and a freaking helmet over his face.”

“Oh.”

Grumbling under his breath, Noah turned his back to the man and sat down on the bed, wondering if it was worth trying to wake Kurt up to get him to drink something. It didn’t even seem like Kurt was asleep, really, because his breathing wasn’t deep enough for that, but his eyes were stuck closed and he hadn’t moved since the last time Noah had shaken him.

Noah whipped back around at the sound of metal grinding against the floor, startled away from his thoughts, to find the man — he assumed it was the same man, unless they’d switched on him — dragging a chair that Noah hadn’t noticed before over to the wall, directly opposite their cell. As Noah stared, the man sat himself down in the chair, edging it back until it pressed up against the wall, took his gun off his belt and placed it on the floor, and reached around to pull the hood off his head.

He didn’t just sound normal; he _looked_ normal, too. He had a mop of blond hair that even Noah could tell needed a cut and a mouth that was actually wide enough to carry the sort of ridiculous smile Noah had pictured on him before. Actually, he looked like the kind of guy Noah would have been checking out, if he were in a bar looking for a date instead of sitting on a thin mattress in a jail cell, and he couldn’t have been much older than Noah himself.

Deciding it would be better not to mention any of that, Noah just squared his jaw and said, “Doesn’t seem like you’re supposed to be taking that off, really.”

The man just shrugged. “Technically, it’s required any time you’re not in there, or when I’m within five feet. Which I’m not. I mean, they told us to just keep it on, but… Yeah. Technically.” The other guard snorted where he stood off to the side of the bars. “Shut up, Jake.”

“Whatever.” Jake tilted his head back against the wall and fell silent.

“Anyway, I’m Sam.” The man turned back to look at Noah with bright green eyes. “No gun and no helmet. I’m not that bad to talk to. And I’m around, like, all day, and it’s gonna get really boring if we just have to stare at the wall the whole time.”

It still sounded like a bad idea, but so did everything else. This whole thing was crap, but with Kurt still unconscious and looking like he wasn’t going to change that anytime soon, maybe it would do Noah some good to talk to someone, just to keep from driving himself nuts. “Fine. So what’d you want to talk about?”

Sam looked surprised at the question, and Noah wondered if he’d thought that far ahead. “I dunno. You see any good movies lately?”

Noah stared. “Seriously? We’re… _this_ is happening and you wanna talk about movies?”

“Well, yeah. Unless you wanna ask me questions I’m not supposed to answer or listen to me ask ones you don’t _want_ to answer.”

Considering this, Noah decided it wasn’t worth arguing the point. He wasn’t even sure what he’d say about it. All he could come up with was, “I guess Captain America was pretty good.” By the way Sam grinned, he knew he’d landed on the right topic.

It took about an hour and a more thorough discussion of past and future Marvel movies than Noah had ever imagined having to decide that talking had been a good choice. It still wasn’t a very useful way to spend his time, but he felt a lot calmer than he had when he first woke up, and Kurt had curled into him about ten minutes ago. It was a small movement, but encouraging, and more than Noah had seen all morning. His thumb rubbed tiny circles on Kurt’s arm as he talked.

During a brief lull in the conversation, Sam’s eyes flicked to the motion of Noah’s hand, and he cleared his throat before speaking again. “So, I know I said the whole point of talking about movies was to _not_ ask questions you won’t answer, but…” He waved his hand in their direction. “Are you two together?”

Noah couldn’t help it; he laughed. It came out more like a hacking cough than anything else, and he had to take a swig of water before he could breathe clearly again, but he wasn’t sorry for it. He was so used to being told they were annoyingly obvious, and here were guys who should know way more about him than a stranger on the street, and they had to ask.

“Uh, sorry?” Sam started to backtrack while Noah was still trying to catch his breath. “I guess I got it wrong, then? You just look pretty close and I— Oh, hell, you’re not brothers or something like that, are you? Because you’ve got different last names and I just—”

“Not brothers.” Noah winced at how raspy his voice sounded now. Jeez, it hadn’t been _that_ funny; he’d just caught the laugh wrong and now his throat felt all fucked up. “Yeah, we’re together. Shouldn’t you know that, though?”

He shrugged. “Guess they didn’t think that was important. I know you _worked_ together, but that’s it.”

“They don’t tell you much, do they?”

“‘Cause I’m just the muscle.”

“Hmm.” Noah couldn’t see his body all that well under the suit, but he’d noticed a lot more smile than muscle so far. “You know, you don’t exactly seem like the prison guard type.”

“I’m not, really. I was a cop, almost a detective. I was gonna take the exam in another month. They pulled me out, said they needed me for some special assignment. National security kinda thing.” National security. Nice to know they were important, at least.

“Okay. Still, you were a cop. Aren’t you supposed to hate criminals and everything?”

“I wanted to _help_ people.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back into the wall. “That’s what I was doing, before they put me here. This is… I dunno. They said you were dangerous, because of the powers and everything. They didn’t tell us what you actually did.”

Noah snorted. “Gee. I wonder why.”

“You seem like nice guys. I mean, not that I’ve really talked to him that much.” He nodded his head at the bed where Kurt lay. “But yeah. There’s no legal process or anything. They just said you had to stay here.” He shifted in his seat, staring down at the black material that covered his shoes. “It’s weird,” he said finally.

By the end of Sam’s speech, Noah’s jaw was clenched and his fingers were unconsciously digging into Kurt’s arm. The lighter mood they’d built while talking about superheroes and special effects was gone. “It’s more than _weird_ ,” Noah growled, swallowing against the power rising in his chest.

“Yeah, well, the whole thing is messed up. A couple weeks ago I didn’t even know people like you existed.”

“People like—” Noah cut himself off when a jolt of electricity broke away and shot down his arm into Kurt’s. At the contact, Kurt wrinkled his nose and shifted a little on the bed before settling back down with a sigh. “Kurt?”

That was— _Oh_. Yeah, he should have thought of that a lot sooner.

“What’s up?” Sam wasn’t close enough to have seen the shock and was clearly confused by Noah’s sudden shift in attention.

Noah made a very conscious decision to ignore him. Instead, he twisted himself on the bed to face Kurt, grabbed both his arms in a tight grip, and let go of all the power that had been growing for the last day and a half. Sparks flew from his body to Kurt’s, collecting around his hands in little pools when he tried to push it through too fast and lighting Kurt’s arms with a sharp, blue glow.

“Whoa, whoa! What the hell are you doing?” Sam shot up at the sight, but Noah glanced up at him and jerked his head to the side, hoping he would take this in stride.

Sam hesitated, one hand on his gun but not making any moves toward them, but the other guard was less understanding. He was shouting — something unimportant — and fumbling for something on his belt, but Noah just pushed harder.

A moment later, the flow of energy slowed to a halt. There was an empty feeling in the pit of Noah’s chest, but the last of the sparks were sinking into Kurt’s skin and his eyes were open, staring up at Noah in confusion. “Noah, what…?”

Whatever Jake had been looking for, he must’ve stopped, because there were no more sounds coming from the hall until Sam cleared his throat. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Noah snapped, not moving his eyes away from Kurt, and Sam finally seemed to take the hint, possibly because Kurt was sitting up instead of dying.

Noah could hear Sam muttering, “Did you know they could do that?” to Jake as they turned away, but he didn’t bother paying attention after that.

“Who was that?” Kurt was sitting upright now, holding himself up in the middle of the bed instead of leaning against the wall and looking more aware than he had since they’d got here.

“Sam. And Jake.” They could do that part later, though. “How’re you feeling?”

“Um, thirsty. And confused?”

One of those was easier to fix than the other, so Noah opened the second water bottle and handed it to him, watching him take a long drink before moving on to part two. “Confused about what?”

“I don’t know.” Kurt furrowed his eyebrows in concentration. “I remember… Okay, talking to someone. Someone with a J.”

“Jensen.”

“Right. And, uh… I don’t know,” he said again. “Was that today?”

“That was yesterday.” Noah picked at a loose thread in the blanket to occupy his hands. If he didn’t have something else to do, he was pretty sure he’d grab for Kurt on instinct, and Kurt was actually awake enough to feel him worry, now.

“Oh.” Kurt took another sip of water, but winced at the motion and lowered his arm to examine it. He seemed surprised to find a bandage wrapped just below his shoulder. “What happened to my arm?”

Noah’s stomach was starting to feel weird again. “You don’t remember fighting?”

“No, I remember that.” Kurt pointed at Noah’s head. “We got knocked out; I know. But I don’t remember _this_ ,” he said, gesturing at his arm again.

Okay, so that was a little better. “You got shot. Some idiot pulled out their gun.”

Kurt didn’t say anything to that, just stared at the bandage like it might give him a different answer.

“You had to get it stitched up and everything. Twice. We went to see some doctor…?”

Kurt didn’t seem to be getting it, though. He was squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head, muttering, “I don’t remember. I don’t remember that.” Finally thinking of something useful he could do with the contact, Noah grabbed Kurt’s hand and tried sending him an image. “Oh. No, I— Okay. Yes, I think I remember him. But… not a lot of anything else?”

Squeezing Kurt’s hand once, Noah pulled away. “Nothing important to remember, anyway.”

“Yes, there _is_.” Kurt’s voice was hard. “I lost a day; it doesn’t feel like tomorrow. And everything in my head is a question.” He capped the water bottle when it started to shake in his hand and dropped it to the bed. “And I’m _still_ tired.”

Noah gave up on trying to keep to himself at the way Kurt stumbled over that last word. He reached out and pulled Kurt close. ‘ _You’re awake now, though_ ,’ he thought, because he knew Kurt would hear him.

_Not for long_ , he heard. _Nothing really works as a substitute._

Glancing down, Noah noticed that Kurt’s skin was just as pale as before. ‘ _What happens if you go too long?_ ’ He almost didn’t ask the question, not sure if he wanted to know.

_I don’t know. I never tested it._

Noah had to stop himself from being relieved, or disappointed. Of course Kurt wouldn’t have locked himself in a dark room for a week out of morbid curiosity; that made no sense. Now they had no time-line, though.

Kurt didn’t seem to want to linger on the subject. _I can’t touch the guards._

‘ _Neither can I. There’s something weird about the suits. I can’t get through them._ ’

_You don’t have to. We could do it the regular way. It’s just the guns._

‘ _Yeah._ ’ Not that he would’ve expected them _not_ to have guns, but it was still fucking frustrating.

Kurt sighed, and Noah had the odd sensation of feeling him chew his lip. Instinct made Noah swipe his tongue against his own lips, as if that would relieve the pressure. _I’m not going to be much help_ , Kurt thought finally.

‘ _Shut up, okay?_ ’ Noah could feel where _that_ train of thought was headed.

It took them twenty minutes to come up with absolutely nothing useful. Maybe he could try something; maybe he could knock Jake into the wall and maybe Sam would hesitate to shoot at them long enough for Noah to take him out too, but this was too well planned for them to be the last line of defense. There’d been like fifty guys coming down at them in that building, and while there probably weren’t quite as many around here, Kurt did have a point. He wasn’t going to be contributing much to any escape attempt.

Still, Noah was tempted, and Kurt had to tell him more than once that he was an idiot if he got himself killed for a plan that basically boiled down to: run.

Kurt slumped further into his arms with every minute, and it was somewhere in the middle of wondering what kind of ‘call’ Santana had gotten that his head dropped down completely, and Noah couldn’t shake him back awake.

That was all he got? That couldn’t have been more than half an hour, and it had taken all his energy from the last day and a half. More, really, since he hadn’t started out empty. That was how he would start now, though, so how long would it take before he could do Kurt any good again?

-

The next day, the sound of the door grinding open was their wake-up call, and Noah winced at how much more support Kurt needed than the last time as they walked the short distance down the hall to Dr. Abrams’ room. Neither of them had been leaking blood this time, but Abrams insisted that the wounds still needed to be cleaned and checked. He did not, however, replace Noah’s bandage this time, so that was probably a good sign that it was healing well.

“How’s the headache?” Abrams asked pleasantly, and smiled to hear that it was gone.

Kurt hadn’t pulled any stitches (how could he, when he barely even moved?), and his bandage was quickly changed, so they didn’t run into any problems until Abrams suddenly reached for a needle and a set of tubes, carrying them back to where Kurt was sitting on the low table. Noah was up in an instant.

“Hey, whoa, where are you going with that?”

Abrams cleared his throat, clearly hoping to intimidate him with the power of the title ‘Dr.’ and leave it at that, but Noah didn’t back down, so Abrams sighed and offered an explanation even as he rubbed a wipe over the crook of Kurt’s elbow. “He had an open wound in the middle of a cell that is nowhere near as clean as it should be. I need a sample so I can run a full blood panel; it’s impossible to rely on symptoms when he’s this disoriented.”

Kurt jerked up when the needle slid into his arm and started mumbling sleepily. “Wha?”

“It’s just to check for infections.”

“No, ‘s not.”

“Okay, fine; it’s not. But most of the world doesn’t even know you exist, and the ones who do never get the chance for the access to find out _why_. We’re all curious. Can you really blame me?”

‘ _Yes_ ,’ Noah thought. ‘ _I really can._ ’

That night, Noah felt enough power swirling in his chest to give Kurt a decent jolt. It was worth a few minutes of conversation, at least. This time, he left the serious topics behind, and asked Kurt what he thought they’d be doing if they were in Iceland.

-

It became a pattern before Noah could think to protest that there shouldn’t be anything regular about this.

He spent most of what he was told was daytime talking with Sam, because that was just about the height of entertainment in this place. He learned far too much about the man’s interests and background, things he probably wasn’t supposed to have known but did anyway because Sam was eager to share. They talked long enough to realize that one of Sam’s high schools — he’d had four altogether, since his family had moved around so much — had been just a couple of towns over from Noah’s, and that they’d both grown up with an unhealthy addiction to Batman comics, even if it was for very different reasons. Sometimes Kurt talked too, but not very often. Jake never did.

Sam helped him keep track of dates, too, so that was useful, if kind of discouraging when he started counting over a week since they’d been home. Noah had to catch himself when he started thinking that it was too bad they’d met here instead of… well, anywhere else. Sam was one of those ridiculously nice guys, the ones who could smile and get away with almost anything. He’d probably get along really well with Finn.

Night was mostly wrapping himself around Kurt and trying to convince himself that the shaking was because they didn’t have a thick enough blanket, and wondering how he would be tomorrow, after one more morning without sun. Sometimes, after giving the static time to build under his skin, Noah could gather enough to jolt Kurt into awareness for a little while, but the energy sapped away quickly and it was harder to do every time. If Kurt would just wake up and talk to him, he thought, this would be so much easier.

He barely let go of Kurt’s arm (or hand, or _whatever_ ) anymore, even though it gave him a more intimate view of the rate Kurt’s mind was shutting down than he was strictly comfortable with. Bits of thoughts and images and sometimes memories started to float in from Kurt’s brain, and it didn’t take long for Noah to understand that Kurt didn’t realize he was sending them. It started out as a mix of concern and confusion over how long it had been or whether anything had changed since the last time he’d opened his eyes, but the thoughts got disconnected as Kurt lost his grip on what was going on and started revisiting older moments.

Once, it was a particularly pleasant memory involving the two of them in a very different bed, and Noah laughed inappropriately in the middle of Sam’s story about his uncle’s cancer.

The one that made Noah stop talking for the rest of the day, ignoring the way Sam looked almost hurt at his sudden silence, was when Kurt had been idly remembering a day they’d spent showing Finn around the city, and had gotten frustrated when he couldn’t recall the tall man’s name. At least Kurt never forgot Noah’s name, but Noah had a feeling that was only because their minds brushed together so often.

Eventually, Kurt stopped focusing on memories and it all turned into a jumbled mess, and the moments Noah got from shots of electricity weren’t so much awareness as they were Kurt being able to open his eyes and recognize someone.

Every couple of days, they walked fifty feet down the hallway and turned left to see Dr. Abrams, who was getting worse and worse at hiding his interest in them, especially now that there was obviously no reason for them to visit so often for their own health. Abrams was always just as confusingly _nice_ about it all as he’d been the first time.

Noah’s bones were aching with the need to get _out_ , because he just wasn’t used to being kept in one place like this, and he shouldn’t ever have had to be. Between the suits everyone wore religiously and Kurt’s dead weight against his side, though, Noah didn’t really see much possibility in any plan he ever came up with, especially when he remembered that this wasn’t a small organization; it was their government, and it wouldn’t be easy to escape from that.

It didn’t take him long to agree with Kurt’s original theory that Jensen didn’t have any idea what to do with them, because they wouldn’t have been sitting around like this if he did. He wondered how much longer it would take for the man to figure something out.

Whenever Noah got too restless, he gave all his pent-up energy to Kurt, and spent a few minutes having increasingly simple conversations.

-

Kurt was actually conscious, for once, when Sam let a familiar name slip out. He winced along with Noah at an off-hand mention of calling Tina Cohen-Chang.

“What?” Sam said, noticing the motion.

“How d’you know Tina?” Kurt was twisting his head around, blinking fast to keep himself awake for the answer.

“She, uh…” Sam laughed lightly. “She might’ve found me staring at the hair dye stuff at a pharmacy. I did some experimenting a while back, but I don’t really know what I’m doing, and it’s gotta look natural if I’m gonna be a cop, right? She knows that stuff better than I do; offered me some good advice. That’s why I wanted to call her; I think I’m due again. Why? Do you know—” His eyes widened. “Oh. OH. She’s not… Is she?”

Noah shook his head. “She’s not. But her husband is. We know them both pretty well by now.”

“I’ve never met her husband,” Sam said quietly.

“Well, if everything goes like Jensen’s planning, you probably will.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “There’s, uh. There’s another guy in here already. What’s he look like?”

Fighting back a wave of something like panic — that would only pass onto Kurt and make everything worse — Noah searched for words. “Tall. Asian… And short hair, no glasses.”

“Not him, then.” Sam nodded to himself, staring at the wall and not bothering to focus on them anymore. “Good.”

_Not good_ , Noah heard from Kurt, and he had to agree. Whoever it was might be someone Sam didn’t know, but they almost certainly did, at least in passing. They’d be able to put a name to the face, if they could see it.

  


When the schedule broke, they weren’t prepared for it.

To be fair, Kurt wasn’t prepared for much, these days. He’d never gone more than a day without sunlight — there was no good reason to, in the regular world — and it had been almost two weeks. Noah’s brand of energy was so much less efficient; it was barely enough to keep the fog from completely overtaking his mind, and coherency was more difficult every day. He had a feeling that a lot of his thoughts were coming from Noah, because he often felt concerned or angry or worried for no apparent reason. Noah’s hand sought him out constantly and Kurt had lost the energy to separate things out any longer.

Independent movement was completely out of the question.

That was okay — ‘ _No_ ,’ a small voice insisted from the back of his mind, ‘ _it’s not okay, but…_ ’ — because they rarely had to move, anyway, and when they did, it was always just a little ways down the hall to see the doctor, and it was always with Noah. Noah wouldn’t drop him. With that assurance, Kurt was beginning to have a hard time remembering why this situation was a bad one, aside from the fact that he hadn’t seen the sun in days and that was just wrong, or even where they were. Usually, Noah reminded him without even meaning to, and Kurt refrained from mentioning the lapse. His world shrank down to two rooms and three different sets of hands — Noah, the doctor, and the black gloves.

If Kurt had been in a state to care about excuses, he might have blamed the lack of energy and the fact that nothing had changed in two weeks for the way neither of them bothered to react when the door opened. The suits made it nearly impossible to distinguish one guard from another, so it wasn’t until one of them approached and shoved Noah away rather than giving Kurt a hand up that they realized it couldn’t have been Sam. The one standing out in the hall, shifting on his feet and managing to look uncomfortable even when completely covered in black rubber, that was Sam.

A hand hooked around Kurt’s arm to replace the one that had been knocked away. This one was much less friendly and Kurt’s first instinct was to claw it away, but his muscles made no effort to obey his instructions and he was hauled into something resembling a standing position without resistance.

Noah was shouting behind him. “What the fuck is your problem? I got him; it’s fine. Sam, what—” He must have been trying to reach Kurt, because familiar fingers closed around his arm for a moment — _Something’s different what are they doing_ — and Kurt felt a blast of _confusion_ that wasn’t all his before the hand was ripped away again and another voice was speaking instead.

“Just stay back there, Noah. Please. I really don’t wanna shoot you.” Kurt heard the words, but didn’t really register their meaning.

It wasn’t until they were moving, out of the room and down the hall with Noah’s yells fading out behind them, that Kurt realized something was wrong, because he was alone. There wasn’t much to be done at that point, though, even as they went past the branch they usually took and walked farther on, because it was hard enough just to keep some semblance of his feet beneath him.

He stumbled along beside the two men, losing track immediately of where they might be going or which turns they took. He only cared when they pushed open a heavy door and released him, letting him fall to his knees in a wide beam of— oh, God, that was _sunlight_.

This wasn’t outside, because there was no breeze or sounds of birds or even cars passing, but the warmth of the sun draped over him and he pulled at it greedily before he could wonder about the whys of the situation. He should, he knew, should ask himself quite a few questions, but his mind was clearing for the first time in days and it felt too good to make himself stop. By the time he was done, he wasn’t sure how many minutes had passed, but he knew he must be glowing.

When his head had stopped spinning from the sudden influx of energy, he looked up warily, finally aware enough to think about the questions. He found a room with a table and a few chairs and rows of large windows lining the wall, the source of his light. Agent Jensen — Kurt was momentarily more startled to find that he remembered the man’s name than to see him there — was seated in one of the chairs, and motioned to one on the other side of the table, inviting Kurt to sit.

“We may have come up with a solution that will work for everyone,” he said as Kurt slid into the chair, wishing the table was narrow enough for him to be able to reach Jensen. He was swimming with pulses of energy for the first time in far too long and he wanted to _use_ some of it.

“What’s that?” A gloved hand landed on his shoulder even as he contemplated the distance, and he knew he wouldn’t get there.

“We should have thought of it earlier, really. It’s all right inside your mind.” Jensen smiled. “It says in your file that you can manipulate minds, even rearrange them if necessary. I take that would be a permanent effect?”

Kurt considered lying, but it occurred to him that it was a rhetorical question. Jensen would have already known, to sound so sure of himself. “Of course.”

“You could remake someone.” Still not a question.

“To a point,” Kurt replied carefully. “I couldn’t erase it all forever, it would still be there, but anything can be blocked off and hidden away with enough effort.”

“And you can make new memories to fill the gaps.”

“Yes.”

“Well. Then I think this will work just fine.” Jensen nodded to someone behind him, and there must have been more people there than Kurt thought, because there was still a man on either side of him when the door opened and someone walked out.

The door slammed behind him, and even though Kurt had the sinking feeling he might already know the answer, he had to ask. “What will work?”

“Reprogramming,” Jensen said simply. “It’s the simplest way. As you yourself pointed out weeks ago, this is sort of a legal muck-up, so we’ve been looking for alternative solutions. It’s really the lifestyle that makes you all so dangerous, rather than the person, so if we could just _remove_ that lifestyle, we would have no problem placing you back in society. With supervision, of course.”

The confirmation made Kurt’s stomach roll. “So you want me to take out, what, everything?”

“No, of course not. They will still be the same person, still have the same friends and personality. The only thing that needs to go is the power and their memories of it, and the associations they’ve developed as a result.”

So, restructure a whole life to leave out a single, major influence, and lock it away so it could never spring up again. Which, honestly, Kurt wasn’t certain that was even possible. Changing memories, sure, he could do that, and he could program in instructions to break off certain ties, but… Powers were physical, and he wondered if Agent Jensen realized that.

“I’m not sure if I—”

“Look, we are aware we can’t force you to take part in this. It’s a fine procedure and you would have to perform it without guidance. So it’s up to you. You can fix up Noah’s brain and give him a normal life, or he can sit in here for however long it takes us to come up with another solution, and we’re very short on options.”

The words made Kurt shiver unconsciously. ‘Another solution’ did not sound promising. However much Jensen claimed to be working (mostly) within the law, Kurt had to wonder how long it would be before he got too frustrated and decided it would be easier to just shoot them and deal with the cover-up. It wasn’t anything that hadn’t been done by governments thousands of times before.

It might work. Powers could be tucked away, hidden from conscious retrieval, even if he’d never tried. It could also fail spectacularly.

Kurt wasn’t about to mention that second option, though. “Alright,” he said, and when he realized that wasn’t enough, that he had to voice some kind of concern to account for the extra minute it had taken to consider, he added, “What about me?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” It wasn’t very reassuring, but Kurt hadn’t been looking for that. “For now, though…” Jensen’s eyes darted back to the door, which was opening once more, and Kurt heard Noah before he could see him.

“You can’t just move people without telling us where we’re going, you have to—” He broke off when he spotted Kurt.

Hands lifted from Kurt’s shoulders and he rose from his chair as Noah was pushed down into another. Noah was staring at him, and Kurt could hardly blame him. The last time Noah had seen him (just a few minutes ago?), Kurt hadn’t even been able to stand on his own.

He wondered what it looked like: Kurt leaving ten minutes (or longer?) before him and suddenly gaining energy in that time difference, standing unrestrained in a room with Jensen and not bothering to try anything. Of course, the gun pointed at Noah’s head had a lot to do with that.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Jensen said, nodding in Kurt’s direction. Noah’s eyes flicked back and forth between them, clearly waiting for someone to offer an explanation.

Kurt didn’t. He stood in front of Noah, cupping his head gently in both hands, and leaned down to kiss the top of his head. ‘ _It will be okay_ ,’ he sent along with it.

Noah jerked back, away from the connection, and growled, “No,” but Kurt didn’t let go of him and more hands kept him secured in the chair.

Kurt watched the awareness fade from Noah’s eyes, slowly at first as he tried to soak up the invading energy rather than let it affect him, and then faster when his body couldn’t keep up. ‘ _I’m sorry_ ,’ he thought, but Noah was too far gone to hear him, and Kurt was already making changes.

Connections and pathways broke under Kurt’s hands. Memories fell away into a dark corner of Noah’s mind as new ones sprang up to take their place, and Kurt boarded up the door behind them. He placed a dark smudge on some of the names most common in Noah’s thoughts, left him instructions buried deep enough to sound like his own ideas. BREAK THIS and FIX THAT and _the cat’s heart stopped under his hand_ became THE CAT GOT HIT BY A CAR, and Kurt was pulling energy straight out from the sun to gather enough to comb through every little bundle of neurons.

When he’d gone over every inch of Noah’s mind, given him half a new life to replace what he was losing and broken every association that would lead him back to it, Noah’s eyes glowed orange, enough to be seen even in the bright room. Kurt took a breath, reached in and PULLED at the electricity spread throughout Noah’s veins, tugging it all back into Kurt’s own body until he was soaking up the last strands and then it was gone. Then he pushed back into Noah’s mind one more time and hid the source of that static as deep as he could, far away from anything else useful.

He sent one last instruction: SLEEP. Those eyes closed, blocking out the glow, and a limp body slumped back in the chair.

There was a moment of silence while Kurt stepped back, away from the man who wasn’t quite Noah anymore. It was done. He wasn’t sure what to do next.

  


-

  


  
**The Restart**

  


  


Noah woke to the sun shining in his face and what was very possibly the _worst_ hangover he had ever had in his life.

He groaned and rolled away from the light, squeezing his eyes shut. Why the hell would he have left the curtains open like that when morning came so damn early? He tugged a pillow up over his head and sighed at the darkness, spreading out a little more over the bed — which felt weirdly bigger; was it bigger than usual? — and letting himself drift off to sleep.

-

When he finally woke up for real, it was a much more forgiving hour of the morning. There was still plenty of light coming in through the window, but it wasn’t aimed directly at his eyes anymore, so Noah sat up and pushed back the covers. His bones cracked against each other when he stretched, and _damn_ , he really must’ve slept wrong somehow, because everything felt out of place.

He shook himself out as much as he could and then heaved himself out of bed. He seriously had to piss and his mouth tasted like a dumpster, which was probably from the massive amount of alcohol he had to have drunk last night to make his memory as hazy as it was. Brushing his teeth took at least four times as long as it should have, and he still didn’t feel clean when he gave up and put the brush down.

The shower was definitely his best idea all morning. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed one until he was standing under the hot spray and watching the water drain away, carrying swirls of soap mixed with grime. He felt like he hadn’t showered in days.

Seriously, how much had he actually had last night? Noah walked through the apartment with a towel wrapped around his waist, looking for any clues that might be hanging around that would tell him what he’d done yesterday. He thought he remembered getting in kind of late from his flight, and his keys were still hanging by the door, so he probably hadn’t gone back out; he never seemed to have the dexterity to hit that hook when there was any amount of alcohol in his system. So he would have been limited to just the apartment, and nothing really looked out of place, so it must have been a quiet, solitary kind of night, which… didn’t sound all the healthy, actually.

More than that, though, it bothered him that he remembered absolutely nothing from the night before, not even the reason _why_ he’d started drinking. Normally, he was pretty good at holding his alcohol (high school parties had given him plenty of practice long before he was legal), and he’d never blacked out so completely that a whole night was left blank. It made him more than a little uncomfortable; he wasn’t crazy about the idea of losing control.

It didn’t seem to have done any harm this time around, so as long as he, you know, never did that again…

There was a weird squirming in his gut when he thought about it, but that might have just been part of the nausea. Jeez, Noah hoped he’s already puked last night; he didn’t need to deal with that on top of the headache that was drumming at the inside of his skull. Maybe he should take an aspirin or something.

The ringing of the phone interrupted his thoughts, making him groan and put a hand to his head. Damn, that was _so_ bad for his headache. Shaking his head against the sound, Noah edged his way over to the phone and picked it up, hoping that whoever was on the other end of the line wouldn’t yell in his ear.

“‘Lo?”

“What? Oh, um. Hi, Noah.” There was a breathy laugh from the other end. “Sorry. It’s Finn. Didn’t actually expect you to pick up. I thought you would still be in Iceland.”

“Well, I’m back.”

“Guess so. I was just gonna leave a message, but… Actually, would you mind if I came over? I’ve gotta talk to Kurt about something and he’d probably rather I do it in person if you guys are back in the city.”

“Yeah, sure.” He really wanted this conversation to end; Finn’s voice was rattling unpleasantly through his ears, and he had to hold the phone an extra inch or two away from him just to stop wincing. “That’s fine. Just gimme like twenty minutes or something.”

“Sure thing. See you soon.”

“Bye.”

Noah hung up, barely catching it in the cradle since he was squeezing his eyes shut against the headache. Yeah, he definitely needed an aspirin. After he’d popped a couple of pills and washed them down with water that did nothing to curb his lingering nausea, he trudged into the bedroom to find some clothes, scrubbing idly at his wet hair with the towel. He’d really let it go while he was away; he would have to get on that.

It was when he was sliding his pants onto the first leg that a thought — put aside while he’d been talking to Finn in favor of getting off the phone as soon as possible — struck him. The combination of the surprise and the lack of balance nearly toppled him over, and he wound up clinging to a dresser with his leg tangled hopelessly in the jeans.

It ran through him like lightening: something that had been tucked neatly away in the back of his brain, shot to the surface so fast it made the world start spinning around him.

_Kurt_.

He’d told Finn to come over to talk to his brother, but Kurt wasn’t _here_.

Noah’s jaw clenched hard. He wasn’t supposed to remember that; not so soon, anyway. Fuck.

-

By the time Finn knocked on the door, Noah was fully dressed and the aspirin was finally starting to take effect. Thank God for that, too, because this conversation was going to be uncomfortable enough without having every syllable stab him in the head.

“Hey!” Finn lifted up a small paper bag with a grin when the door swung open. “I grabbed some breakfast for us, too. Figured you guys might not have much in your fridge after a couple weeks away.”

“Oh.” Noah had planned to jump into things as soon as Finn walked in, but he was distracted by the open bag being thrust toward him. He reached in and grabbed a powdered donut, tipping it briefly in Finn’s direction before taking a large bite. “Thanks.”

“No problem. So.” Finn’s grin dropped a little and he cleared his throat, looking less comfortable already. “Where’s Kurt? I should really… y’know.”

Shit, did Finn have bad news too? He always had the same approach to it, shifting from foot to foot and looking vaguely guilty even if he hadn’t been the cause himself, voice a bit too loud; everything he was doing right now. This was going to be such an unpleasant conversation. Noah felt his stomach twist at the thought, and glared down at the donut. It was an easier target.

He led Finn into the kitchen to talk, dropping the donut on the counter as he went. He doubted he would be able to eat much of it until they were done.

“Is it bad?” he asked when Finn started looking around for Kurt. It would probably be easier to get that out of the way first, just in case Finn didn’t feel like talking after he heard what Noah had to say.

“What?” Finn’s head whipped back around from where he’d been peering into the living room. “Not too bad, no. Dad was… in the hospital yesterday. Nothing awful, it was just a small accident and he’s fine, already back home, but you know Kurt’d freak if he didn’t get, like, every detail. Dad tried to call him yesterday but he only got voicemail. Did you guys just get in last night, or what?”

Noah nodded. “Late.” If everything was fine, though, he was out of options to stall. “And, um, Kurt’s not here.”

“He run out to the store or something? Maybe I should’ve told you guys I was bringing breakfast.”

“Uh, no. He’s actually not here… at all. Like, he didn’t come home with me.”

Finn stared at him. “What?” he started slowly, eyes searching Noah’s like he expected to find a lie if he looked hard enough. “Where is he?”

Noah tried not to sigh. Finn liked him, sure, had adjusted his protective-brother instincts pretty well to Kurt finding a steady boyfriend a few years ago and never looked back (they’d even managed to bond a little), but he’d been Kurt’s family since high school. His loyalty was predetermined, and Noah had the nasty feeling he was about to get punched. “As far as I know? Somewhere back in Iceland.”

He didn’t get hit, but Finn was clearly done asking questions and waited for more to be offered.

“We had a fight a couple days ago. He stormed off and totally disappeared, and I came back here. I’m sorry, man, but I’m just fucking done. I wasn’t gonna go off looking in a country I barely know.” Kurt had given him very little reason to _want_ to, anyway.

Getting out of the country hadn’t solved any of their problems; it had just pushed them all up to the surface, because there was nothing left to be a distraction. The tension had blurred the whole vacation to the point that he could barely remember specifics, only the general landscape — which was green and seriously gorgeous — and the mood — which was ugly and frustrating. They’d skipped between towns and tried to find somewhere calm and pleasant enough to unwind, but it wasn’t long before Noah figured out that wasn’t the issue.

He couldn’t recall the point that had finally set them off; probably it was something that shouldn’t have been at all important. Then it _was_ important, because it was Kurt complaining that they never spent any time apart and Noah wondering why their relationship was exactly the same as it had been three years ago and both of them bringing up things they really had no right to. Then it was Kurt grabbing his bag and slamming the door behind him, and Noah waking up to an empty room the next morning and deciding, ‘ _fuck it_.’

The alcohol last night hadn’t done a very good job of making him forget that. Not for longer than a few hours, anyway.

“What, you didn’t even try to _call_ or anything?”

“Can’t use our cells when we’re on another continent, Finn.”

“Okay, okay, fine.” Finn scrubbed at his face for a moment. “So, you don’t know when he’s coming back?”

Noah shrugged. “Figure he has to eventually, to get his stuff.”

“What do you— Oh.” Finn winced, eyes darting down to the half-eaten donut on the counter. “Was it that bad?”

“Yeah. Think so.”

The last words Kurt had said on his way out the door had sounded… final. Honestly, Noah wasn’t expecting to see him for a while, even to get his things. He was pretty much okay with that, too.

It felt like he should be sad over this, like he should be sorry to see the relationship he’d been working on for five years fall apart, because that would be the normal reaction, right? But he thought back to the look on Kurt’s face when he had turned around in the doorway for just a moment and muttered ‘ _I’m sorry_ ’ without even meeting Noah’s eyes, and all he had was the anger flooding his system, pushing everything else out.

Because how the _fuck_ did Kurt think it was okay to duck out and run after _five years_ with only a half-hearted apology to make up for it?

“How did that even happen, though?” Finn said thoughtfully, face still slightly scrunched like he was trying to work through it all but coming up empty. His fingers fidgeted around the top edge of the bag he’d brought in with him. “You guys were doing so great. I saw you right before you left, and you were only gone for two weeks.” He shook his head. “I bet it’s not _over_. Everyone fights; this one’s just weird ‘cause you did it in another country. He probably just needs a few days.”

“We weren’t.” Noah turned around abruptly and a moment later wasn’t sure why. He started a slow circuit of the room instead, looking for something to justify the shift in attention. “We weren’t okay, really. Haven’t been for a while.” He stopped in front of the calendar that hung on the fridge, searching the numbers. It was, what, the seventh, right?

“But I talked to Kurt the day before you left. He said you two were fine. Great, actually. And we went out and everything and you seemed okay.”

Noah opened a cabinet to the left of the fridge and reached in to pull out his phone. They hadn’t even taken them to the airport; why would they when the things wouldn’t work in Iceland? It’d just be another thing to worry about losing. “Good at faking it, I guess. But, yeah. I think this has been coming for a while.” He turned on his phone and, on impulse, grabbed Kurt’s phone as well. Might as well have it ready when Kurt showed up with boxes.

“But you—”

“Finn, it happened, okay? I’m not totally excited about it either, but it’s done.” And the sooner Finn stopped trying to argue against that, the sooner Noah could get to the ‘moving on’ part of the break-up.

Finn blew out a long breath. “Well. Sorry, man. I mean, I thought you guys were really good together, but I guess… Sorry, anyway. I’m just gonna…” He started toward the door, leaving the paper bag on the counter. “If he does come by, tell him I’m looking for him, okay?” He stopped in the open doorway, nodding at the phone Noah still had in his hand. “I guess calling him won’t work if you’ve got his phone.”

“Sure thing.”

“Hey, did you guys ever get to that Museum? The dick one?”

“Yes.” Noah replied without thinking, and only remembered it was the right answer after he was done saying it.

“How was it?”

“I dunno. Full of dicks.” He gestured vaguely with the cell phone in his hand. “Fuckin’ weird, really.”

“Okay, cool.” Finn nodded, tapped a foot against the floor, and finally cleared his throat. “Bye, then.”

“Yeah.” What had that been? Was that Finn saying he didn’t want to have to hate Noah after this? Maybe hoping they could keep up a friendship? They got along pretty well, but it would be weird as hell whenever Kurt came up, and he definitely would.

Or maybe it was just Finn trying — and failing — to make his exit a little less awkward.

Finn closed the door behind him and Noah was left alone again. He glanced down at his phone, which had finally woken up completely and showed the usual screen, along with the time and date. It was the eighth. Well, at least he’d guessed close. That made two weeks and a day.

Glancing at the donut that lay abandoned on the counter, with a large chunk missing from one side and crumbs trailing around it that would probably attract ants if he left it out too long, Noah shook his head and picked it up, dumping it back in the bag along with the rest. It could wait; he didn’t have the stomach to finish it now. He had the feeling this was going to be a very lazy day, since he wasn’t actually needed anywhere, still technically on vacation.

Really, he just wanted another shower.

-

‘ _Iceland was a good idea_ ,’ Noah decided the next day. Sure the trip itself had sucked, but it had given him time — and space — to think. After using yesterday as a sort of decompression zone (i.e. he spent most of the day alternating between the kitchen and living room, nursing his hangover and his sore feelings), he felt like he had a better handle on things.

Breaking up with Kurt would be a good thing, he was sure, because they weren’t even happy toward the end, though that would be easier to support once he got past the ‘intense, irrational anger’ stage (and maybe it was a good thing Kurt had taken off for a while, after all). He’d thought they’d been good together and part of him still felt like maybe they’d just taken a wrong turn somewhere, but… Sometimes things didn’t work out.

The other, major conclusion he came to was that his relationship wasn’t the only thing that needed to change, which was why he was calling Santana and asking her to grab coffee with him this afternoon.

-

Noah had sipped his way through half of his Americano by the time Santana walked through the door, looking tired and annoyed. When she saw him, though, a smile dropped onto her face, pushing the rest out.

“Hey!” She pulled him in for a quick hug when he stood, making him hastily place his coffee on a nearby table to avoid spilling it all over her. “God, am I glad you’re back. Good timing, too. Just a few days ago I started getting calls, and now it’s like everyone needs us at once, and something like half of them are FBI. I barely have enough people to cover it all.”

“Yeah?” Noah picked up his coffee again when she took a step back, holding it in front of him as an extra layer of protection, not that it had stopped her the first time.

“Yeah. It’s crazy. Okay, I’ve definitely gotta get me some coffee or I’m gonna fall over, but stay right there. Where’s Kurt?” She looked around the tiny café as if she expected him to pop up from behind a chair.

This conversation would be so much easier if he didn’t have to work through a twenty minute explanation of their breakup first. “He’s not here.”

“Damn. ‘Cause I’m gonna ask you all about your trip and I wanted to see how many times I could make him blush. Oh well.”

Santana walked off and returned a minute later with something tall and steaming. She moaned appreciatively as she sipped the drink and leaned back into a chair.

“That’s obscene,” Noah mentioned.

“Oh, shut up. Like you’ve never been indecent in a coffee shop.”

Fair point. Okay, he needed to stop stalling or he would end up in a long conversation about Iceland and Kurt and whatever else she could think of, and he wouldn’t get anything done.

“Santana, I’m not going to be able to help with all the jobs you’re getting.”

She stared at him, bemused. “Look, Noah, I get that you needed the time off and everything — God knows I could use some too — but you’re back now and—”

“No, I mean I’m done. I’m quitting.”

“You—” Santana’s mouth worked mutely for a moment. It wasn’t often Noah saw her speechless, but he didn’t relish the occasion. “Oh my God; you’re serious?”

“Well, yeah.” He offered her what he hoped was an apologetic smile. Apparently this was worse timing than he’d thought, but that didn’t change his determination to leave. “It’s just not what I want to do forever, you know? And if I’m gonna start somewhere totally new, better to do that sooner.”

“You are quitting on me after _eight years_ at the same job, in the middle of a damn _coffee shop_?”

Reaching into his jacket, Noah nodded. “San, we’ve known each other since middle school. Figured I owed you more than a letter on your desk. I mean, I do _have_ a letter.” He pulled out an envelope and held it out to her, but she just stared at it until he gave up and dropped it onto the table between them. “We’re hired by the job and I know I wasn’t scheduled for anything; two week’s notice doesn’t really apply.”

The other benefit of a public location, Noah reminded himself as he watched Santana swallow hard and glance around the room, was that he couldn’t be yelled at nearly as much, if only because their jobs were technically confidential.

“Are you sure you’ve thought this through?” Santana said carefully, though her hands clenched around her coffee.

“I’m just tired of doing a job I hate, that I can’t even talk about.” Investigating, fact verification, double-checking unimportant details; he didn’t understand why it had to be such a big secret when everything he did was boring as hell, and he had no idea how he’d stayed sane for eight whole years of it. Probably thanks to all the laser tag and paint ball that he was definitely _not_ too old for, thank you very much.

“And what the hell else are you going to do, huh?”

Noah’s eyes narrowed into a glare at those words and his hand clenched around the leg of the table in front of him. “You think this is the only job I can do? What the fuck, Santana? We’ve been friends for _years_ and now you— Ow! Shit.” He winced as he shook out the finger that had just jolted with a stinging pain. ‘ _Must’ve gotten a shock from the damn table_ ,’ he thought. ‘ _Why they hell do they have tables with metal legs, anyway. Isn’t wood more of a coffee shop thing?_ ’

Across the table, Santana was leaning forward and eying him warily, anger suddenly forgotten. “Noah…” Her gaze darted to the side and back. Noah followed it for a moment, confused, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. “You’ve got it, right? I mean.” She gestured at the hand that had just been shocked. “You’re in control?”

Of what, his hand? Static electricity? The table?

Because the answer to most of those questions was: no.

And if she meant to ask whether he was in control of his temper — which was probably the most likely explanation, come to think of it — then that might’ve been the most hypocritical thing she’d ever said to him.

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” That answer seemed to satisfy her, anyway, and she looked much calmer than before when she leaned back in her chair.

“Look, I’m not saying you couldn’t do anything else, I just… why would you? We’re supposed to be in this together.”

“Jesus, seriously? ‘Together?’ This is just a job, San, it’s not a fucking cult.”

Santana hesitated for a moment and then squared her shoulders, leaning in once again. “Okay, Puckerman, listen up, because I’m gonna say this exactly once, and never again. I’ve known you for fifteen years; that’s more than half my life. You, me, and Brittany got all the way to New York together. I kinda love you.” She sighed heavily and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “And now I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

“You know, _you_ used to be the one who was always spewing all that ‘This is who we are’ crap. Well, you or Kurt, I dunno, you kinda blended together after a while.” Her eyebrows came together. “Huh. Where is Kurt in all this?”

“Fuck if I know.” Noah stood, fingers crushing in the sides of his half-empty cup. He was done with this. “He’ll probably be back in the country in a few days. You can’t talk to him about it then. I’m out.”

“Kurt’s—”

“Don’t know where he is; don’t care. Back off, Santana. I’m leaving.” God, he just… He’d never wanted to hit something so bad in his _life_ , and he wasn’t even sure where that had come from. His hand clenched further around the coffee and he tossed it down into the trash can with a solid _thud_ to avoid splitting the paper cup in half.

With a quick sidestep around the chairs, Santana managed to get in front of him for a moment. “Noah, it’s not that simple, you know that. You can’t just quit.”

“Can. Did. Let it go.” He pushed his way past her and headed for the door.

Santana didn’t follow, just called after him. “Fine, figure it out on your own. I’ll be here when you got your head on straight again. Get yourself the fuck together, Noah!”

Noah was sure that half of the eyes in the café followed him out after that.

-

He wound up walking home, grateful that the coffee shop had been closer to the office than his apartment, because that gave enough him time to cool down on the way. By the time he was pushing open the door to his building, he felt much calmer, calm enough to check on the mountain of mail that must have built up over the last couple of weeks, even.

Noah pulled out his key chain and flipped through it, looking for the really tiny one that would fit his mailbox. Just as he found it, he heard a voice from behind him.

“Noah! What a nice surprise; I didn’t even know you were back.”

When he turned around, he found Brian smiling at him with his arm around a girl. Noah raised an eyebrow. Huh. He would’ve pegged Brian for… well, celibate by default, really.

“Oh.” Brian seemed to notice Noah staring and gestured his free hand toward the girl by his side. “This is Mindy. We just started seeing each other. Mindy, this is Noah, my neighbor.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mindy said sweetly, smoothing her skirt and holding out a hand for him to shake. She was pretty. Not beautiful, and Kurt would probably have something to say about how she should be doing her hair, but pretty.

Brian and Mindy. Seriously, even their names were boring together. These two were made for each other.

“Yeah, you too. I’m actually a floor up, so I dunno if you’ll see me that much.”

“We always do seem to make it to the mailboxes at the same time though, don’t we?” Brian winked at him, as though including him in a very special secret.

“Yeah, guess we do.” Unfortunately. “Well, you guys have fun.” He held up the pile of mail he’d pulled from his box. “I’ve gotta deal with all the leftovers from two weeks away.”

“Of course! I nearly forgot. How was Iceland, by the way?” Brian leaned back a little against the table below the mailboxes, looking perfectly content to settle in for a long conversation.

“You went to Iceland?” Mindy looked even more interested, if that was possible. “Really? How neat! I’ve always wanted to go.”

Noah had to get himself out of that, definitely. “Uh, it was good. Really green. I’ll have to get back to you when I’ve got pictures, okay?”

“Yes, let’s do that. You and Kurt can tell us all about it.” It figured Brian would be one of those people who _liked_ seeing other people’s vacation pictures.

“I’ll let you know.” Noah gave them a short wave which Brian returned, while Mindy just smiled at him vaguely and followed his path up the stairs. She seemed oddly interested for having just met him. That had been Brian’s reaction, too, when he’d first moved in a few years ago.

Yeah, those two were definitely meant to be.

Noah trudged tiredly up the stairs. He already felt drained and he’d really only done the one thing today. Really, he was just grateful that Brian hadn’t thought to ask about Kurt, because that conversation with _that_ person sounded like more than he had the energy for on any day.

He’d have to be careful about that picture thing, though. Especially because it wouldn’t take long for it to become very clear that he didn’t _have_ any pictures.

-

The next couple of weeks were all about getting back to “normal” while also starting something new. At least, it should have been. People kept interrupting him.

The first offender was Brittany Pierce, who knocked on his door the very next day. Noah opened the door and stared. “How did you get up? I didn’t even buzz you in.”

“I came in through a window. I’m working on my flexibility anyway; it was good practice.”

“Oh… kay? Uh, do you want to come in, then?” He stepped back, swinging the door open a bit wider, but Brittany just shook her head.

“Santana says we’re giving you space. Well, she also says you’re an asshole, but I don’t believe her. I think you’re just sad that Kurt’s gone. But he’ll be back, okay?”

“Britt—”

Brittany smiled, dancing in a little closer. “He loves you, though. He’ll come back. And you can call me when you want to, kay?” Her smile stretched at the scar that lay across her cheekbone. Noah remembered how she got it — what was it, about five years ago? — one of the rowdier nights at their favorite bar and a badly-aimed shot glass. Santana nearly ripped the guy’s face off. Yeah, Noah remembered that, and a thousand other memories of years spent with the pair of them (most of them better than that one).

He’d known them both for way too long. He couldn’t cut them out of his life, he just… needed a few more weeks, at least.

“I’ll call.”

“Good.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Bye.”

Altogether, it was a much more pleasant experience than the rest of his week.

He wasn’t officially looking for a job just yet. He was doing what Quinn would probably call ‘discovering himself’ but which he chose to refer to as taking a fucking break. That vacation sure as hell hadn’t gotten him any rest, so he figured a week or two wasn’t too much to ask.

In the interest of not going crazy, however, he was looking around online; not necessarily for something he could apply for right away, but more to get a feeling for what kind of jobs were actually on offer just now, and what he might want to do. He’d gone into a very specific line of work right after high school, and he’d never given much thought to anything else, so this was all new.

Worst case scenario, he had a couple of cousins in the city who liked him well enough to find him a job at their office. Not that office work sounded like what he was looking for, but it was something.

He woke up one morning to find his alarm clock fried.

He was still in the habit of waking up in time with the sunrise, so it didn’t exactly throw off his schedule, but it was still annoying. Confusing, too, because he couldn’t find anything _wrong_ with the thing, exactly. It had just stopped. He fiddled around with the battery and reset everything, and it seemed to work fine; he couldn’t understand what had gone wrong.

On the other hand, technology had been weird around him lately. Two days later, he picked his cell phone off the bedside table, just to see if he’d gotten any messages during the night, and found that all of his text and voicemail history had been deleted. It shouldn’t have been that big a deal, it was just that he had an old message there from Kurt (the one he’d left while drunk, rambling and going off on tangents and saying things about Noah’s eyes that he’d never say on a normal day, cut off at the end because he’d just kept right on talking through the beep; the one Noah hadn’t been able to bring himself to delete, both because it was fucking adorable and because it was too much fun to hold over Kurt’s head) and… No, it didn’t matter.

He had weird dreams, but he forgot them by the time he woke up.

He ran into Mercedes at the supermarket, by which he meant that he found her crying over of a couple of oranges she was weighing out in the produce section.

“Um.” Noah glanced at the screen. “It’s… really not _that_ expensive?”

“ _Noah_. Oh my God, am I glad to see you!” She whipped around and grabbed him in a tight hug, nearly choking him. After a moment of shock, he just held on as best he could. They really weren’t the hugging type of friends, which meant something was probably wrong besides the price of the oranges.

It took her almost five minutes to let go, during which time Noah ignored the dampness on his shoulder and shot dirty looks at the customers who paused to stare. When she pulled away, he reached for the oranges to give her a minute to wipe her eyes. His fingers brushed against the metal tray of the scale and he felt a shock. “Ah! Fuck.” He’d been doing that a lot lately. Seriously, technology _hated_ him. “So. Uh, what’s wrong?” He’d never been that good at talking to Mercedes. This was really more Kurt’s field than his.

“God, I’m sorry.” Mercedes gave a weak laugh, grabbing the oranges from the tray to dump them into her cart. “I’ve just… been kind of a mess lately. It’s my brother. He’s been missing for three days.”

“Jeez, are you serious?” That would definitely explain the crying.

“Yeah,” she said shakily, now poking through green bananas. “He didn’t come back from a job. I mean, I know he’s not the only one, but I’m gonna go ahead and be selfish here.” Her voice dropped. “I miss him.”

There was more than one? He hadn’t even heard anything on the news… “What did the police say?”

“What?”

“What are they saying about James? Do they have any leads?”

It took her a few moments to respond to that, staring at him with her mouth open in the meantime. “They didn’t say anything. It’s not like we could _report_ it.”

“What the fuck?” His eyebrows shot up, and he was kind of hoping that she would realize she’d said something completely wrong, but she didn’t correct herself. “Why not?”

“Because he disappeared during a _job_ , Noah. They all did.”

“ _All?_ ” How many of them were there?

“Look, I don’t want to talk about this with you, okay?” She’d seemed pretty intent on crying into his shoulder, though. But now she was done crying, and she brandished an unripe banana in his direction. “Just… where’s Kurt?”

Ducking out of the way of the banana, Noah huffed out a breath. He was so sick of people asking him about Kurt. “I don’t know. Look, I don’t know what your thing is, but you seriously need to go to the police on this one, and—”

“Oh my God. Kurt’s missing too?” Mercedes put a hand to her mouth, dropping the banana back onto the shelf.

“What? No, he’s not _missing_ , he’s just not here!”

“Are you sure he—”

“Look, I’m gonna go, Mercedes.” Like he said, he had never been good at talking to Mercedes, and this was freaking him out more than usual. “Just… Jesus, call the police, okay?”

He’d be looking in the news for some kind of report, but honestly, a large part of him doubted that what Mercedes said was even true. If there were enough people missing for her to use the phrase “all of them,” there would be plenty of worried friends and family members, and one of them would have called. It made more sense that Mercedes was lying (for whatever reason, because he sure as hell couldn’t figure it out) than that a whole group of people had completely lost their minds.

He called James when he got home, after searching through his desk for the list of work contacts he’d kept, and left a message on his machine. Then, just in case James _was_ missing — maybe Mercedes wasn’t dealing with it very well; he knew how much her family meant to her — Noah left another message with Quinn, telling her to check on Mercedes.

And then that was it. He was done. That wasn’t his life anymore.

He never did see a report.

-

Tina Cohen-Chang showed up at his door more than a week in, looking frazzled and uncertain. It was so far from her usual appearance that Noah didn’t even bother to complain about how he was trying to break off from his old connections, just stepped aside and let her in.

Unlike Brittany before her, Tina accepted the invitation, and unlike Mercedes, she wasn’t crying. Noah was pretty grateful for that, actually; it was harder to get ‘back to normal’ when people were using him as a tissue.

“I wanted to talk to you about Mike,” Tina said, sitting rigid on a chair in his living room.

Normally, he would try to avoid this kind of topic (why was it that _now_ , after he’d quit, everyone from his old job suddenly needed to talk to him?), but the contrast of the off-white wall behind her made Tina look even paler than she had when he’d opened the door, and he couldn’t manage to say no. “Okay. What about him?”

“Have you talked to him recently? At all?”

“Sorry, I haven’t. I haven’t really been talking to anyone, lately.”

“So he didn’t— he didn’t talk to you about… anything?” Tina chewed at her lip a little, still managing to look a little hopeful.

“No. Last I heard from him was a few weeks ago, but he seemed fine then. Tina,” he added, trying to catch her gaze from where it was fixed on the wall beside his head. “Why? What’s up?”

She sighed. “He’s just been acting… very weird, lately. Did you know he quit? Santana’s been calling him for days, but he won’t pick up, and _I_ don’t know what’s wrong. We’ve been fighting all the time. It’s like he doesn’t have any idea what I’m thinking, which isn’t even _possible_!”

When her breath hitched just a little on the last word, Tina closed her eyes tightly and slumped back into the chair.

“I… look, I know you guys are like totally synced most of the time, but everyone’s gonna have problems.” In his case, that problem was having spontaneously evolved into a therapist. “He can’t _always_ read your mind.”

Tina opened one eye just wide enough to shoot him a judgmental look. “Of course he can.”

“Okay, whatever. But maybe it’s a good thing. I mean, I quit too, and it’s worked out for me.” He didn’t mention that a breakup had been good for him as well; that would probably push Tina right over the edge.

At least that distracted her for a minute. “You quit? Why? Did you and Mike talk about quitting?”

“Na, just me. I dunno why he did it. I’m just looking for something else to do; got tired of all the weird hours and shit.”

“But isn’t it hard to, you know, release? Without the job?”

“Not really. I’ve never been one of those people who needs work to feel useful and shit. I’m busy. Looking for something else anyway, now.”

“But—” Tina shook her head. “Never mind. I can’t… I’m just worried about everything, now.” She offered him a small smile. “It’s your own life. Just let me know if you and Mike do end up talking, alright?”

He wouldn’t mention that, without the job, and with both of them apparently trying to distance themselves like they were, it was unlikely Mike would be calling him up anytime soon. “Sure thing. But, really. It could be nothing.”

“I know something’s wrong,” Tina whispered. “It’s just, I know your jobs were—”

A loud buzz rang through the room from the entry, interrupting her.

“Just a second.” Noah stood up and walked over to the door, pressing the button on the intercom. “Yeah?”

“Hey! It’s Mindy! Sorry, could you let me in? I tried to ring Brian, but I think he might be asleep.”

“Sure.” He rang her in, hoping that was the end of the conversation.

“Thanks so much! Hey, Brian’s been talking about you lately. He still wants to see those pictures.”

Oh, God. “Uh, haven’t had a chance to get them off the camera yet, sorry. Maybe next week.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“Thank you _so_ much,” Noah mumbled, but not into the intercom. “Tina I— Oh.”

She was standing in the hall when he turned around, bag hanging off her shoulder. “I should get back. I really just wanted to stop by on my way home from work. So you’ll let me know if he calls?” She looked just the same as she had when she’d first arrived: upset, but still just barely together.

“Yeah. I will. But maybe call me in a week anyway; let me know how it goes on your end?”

“Alright. Thank you, Noah. For the help.”

“Yeah.”

He kept getting the feeling that he wasn’t really doing anything to help anyone, in the end.

-

On a Tuesday afternoon, just over a week and a half after he’d arrived home, any semblance he’d held of normalcy vanished without a trace, because Santana was the next person to arrive at his door.

“Did you know,” Santana said casually, pushing past him to stride straight into the room, “that you never got on the plane to Iceland?”

“Thought you said you were gonna leave me alone.”

“I said I’d give you time to figure out you were crazy on your own. Turns out, we don’t have time. Sorry. Hey, did you hear the part about how you never got on the plane? Kurt didn’t, either. As far as I can tell, you two never left the country.”

“I didn’t even buzz you in.”

“I told someone named Brian that I was here to help you move around some photos, and are you even listening to me? You did not get on a plane. Kurt did not get on a plane. You two _did not get on a plane_. Now, isn’t that interesting?”

Noah was about to reply, but he glanced to the side and was immediately distracted by the small crowd of people making their way into his apartment behind Santana.

Quinn entered first, dragging behind her a woman Noah had seen around the office but never worked with — Laura, he knew, because their agency was small enough for everyone to know everyone. Mike followed, looking bemused, and shrugged helplessly in Noah’s direction, like he had no idea what was going on here but had allowed himself to be dragged along in the hope that there would be snacks provided (which Noah wouldn’t necessarily put past him). Brittany was the last, shepherding two more of his coworkers — Chris and Kayla, he remembered — before her.

Looking at the odd assortment of people in his apartment, which looked like an even larger group when Brittany swung the door shut behind her and left them in an enclosed area, Noah had to wonder why Santana had decided to gather such a weird grouping of coworkers and bring them to his living room. He would suspect an intervention (was Santana crazy enough to put together an intervention for quitting his job?), but he hardly knew Laura or Kayla at all, and he’d only ever worked with Chris once, years ago. So that could probably be ruled out.

Quinn seemed to be the only one other than Santana who understood what was happening, and she stood against the wall, eying him suspiciously. Well, maybe Brittany understood, too. It was always hard to tell, with her.

“Santana, what the hell?”

“I need to know,” she said instead of answering. She pulled him aside with a sharp tug on his arm, just out of earshot of the rest of the crowd. “I need you to tell me if you lied, or if you really believe you left.”

“Of course I left. Why the hell would you think I didn’t?” He jerked his arm away.

“Because I know people. They said you never went through.”

“And you trust them more than me?”

“Noah, _obviously_ I trust you; I wouldn’t have asked you if you’d lied if I didn’t! But there’s a difference between believing that you _think_ you left the country and believing that it actually happened.”

Noah scoffed. “No there isn’t.”

“The fact about 80 percent of our agency quit in the last couple of weeks begs to differ.”

That… That just couldn’t be right. “80?”

But Santana didn’t take back the number. She just nodded. “And guess where the other 20 are at? They’re all missing. ‘Cept me and Quinn.”

God, it was just like Mercedes. Automatically, his mind pushed this away. It couldn’t be real; it wasn’t his business; it had _nothing_ to do with him; they needed to leave.

“The ones who quit are acting weird. Half of them broke up with their partners, if they have them, a couple are packing up to move out of the city, and most of them probably threw their cell phones into the fucking wall because I keep getting ‘not in service’ messages!” Santana had drawn the attention of the rest of the room by the end, breathing heavily and glaring like _he_ was the one who made his coworkers into apparent assholes.

“I rounded some of them up,” she continued. “These were the only ones who didn’t slam the door in my face when I came by. And we are going to figure this out, because I’m tired of this shit going on behind my back.”

“Okay,” Noah started carefully, biting his tongue against the anger coiling in his stomach. He didn’t need this. “Okay. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m pretty damn sure it doesn’t involve me. So maybe you should just—”

“And what are you going to do when you overload and start spewing electricity everywhere? Maybe next time you take the subway you kill the whole train? I know you don’t like talking about it but it’s a _problem_.”

He stared at her. He’d never been more convinced that someone was insane.

“What the hell’s wrong with everyone lately?” She whirled around to gesture at Mike. “Would you look at his mind? Seriously, I don’t care about your little hissy fit either, just figure out if he’s lying.”

Obviously, Mike agreed with him. “Um, what? How’m I supposed to… What?”

Santana paused. “Wait. Wait. Mike, what did you used to do with our agency?”

Shrugging, Mike looked around to the group for help and found none. “Investigating,” he said finally, “mostly. Fact-checking. You know, whatever people needed.”

“Noah?”

“Yeah. It was crap. That’s why I left.”

“Oh my God.” Her hair flew as she looked back and forth between them, and the rest of the group. When she met Quinn’s eyes, they widened. “Oh my God. You don’t know. None of you _know_ what—”

The door flew open, crashing against the wall as a woman dived through the opening.

Instantly, Mike shot forward, kicking a leg up high enough to connect with the woman’s hand and knocking something to the floor. The woman whirled, eyes widening at the sight of the small crowd in the living room, and dashed for the door. Quinn got their first and slammed it shut, only to disappear into nothing when the woman took a swing at her.

When the woman turned around one more time, Noah’s mind finally caught up with him. That thing Mike had knocked to the floor was a gun. And the woman was Mindy.

“What the _fuck_?”

At his words, Mindy turned and launched herself at him. At first he thought she was going to tackle him to the ground, but even as he raised his arms she shot past him, brushing against his arm and pushing him to the side. Instinctively, his hand flew out to steady himself and closed over her arm, and she jerked wildly before falling to the ground, twitching where she lay.

“Huh.” Santana moved to stand over her body, prodding at it with her toe and getting only an extra-large twitch in response. “Cool. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Noah stared down at his hands. Streaks of blue sparks were arching through his fingers, but he didn’t feel a thing. “Oh, hell.” He waved his hand around, trying to shake the electricity off him, but he flung it out too far and brushed against Santana’s leg, who jumped and scowled at him.

“Watch it,” she said, and went back to kicking lightly at Mindy’s barely-conscious body.

Looking around the room, it was clear he wasn’t the only one to have this reaction.

Mike was jabbing experimentally at the air, muttering to himself. Laura inexplicably had a knife in her hands that Noah was sure had been back in the kitchen earlier. She dropped it a moment later, staring down at her hand blankly. Kayla and Chris were both relaxing slowly from defensive stances.

No. Nope. He wasn’t doing this. Everything in his head was screaming at him to get out, _get out now_ , so he listened to it, picking himself up and heading straight for the door.

He was nearly out, had one foot outside, when he was halted by a pull on his shoulder. “Santana, I—” When he turned around, Santana was on the other side of the room. In fact, there was no one near him at all, but something was still tugging at his shoulders, his arms, his chest, and he took a jerky step back toward the center of the room before he looked down.

On the floor, Santana’s shadow was darkened and stretched out to an absurd length, merging with his own and shifting in waves as he was pulled forward. “Noah,” she said calmly, as he fell down under the weight to kneel on the floor, tangling his shadow further with hers. “This is real.”

-

“I don’t think there’s any way I could’ve forgotten all of _that_.” Noah twisted his hands around the mug of coffee he’d made for Kayla before she’d decided she wasn’t up for it. ‘ _Not like I am either_ ,’ he thought grumpily.

“Well, you did.” Santana flicked him sharply on the forehead. “So get over it. We gotta move past all the cool ‘hey we have superpowers’ thing and into the important stuff.”

“Are you _sure_ I’m not a ninja or something?” Mike had been looking increasingly disappointed every time that point was brought up, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop himself from asking.

“Yes, Mike. You’re a telepath, okay? You took a Goddamn karate class in high school, Jesus. Don’t you dare freak out on me again,” she added when Noah’s hands tightened their grip at the word ‘telepath.’ “I don’t do that physical stuff very often, not sure I have the juice for it again. Plus, I _definitely_ don’t have the patience.”

Kayla raised her hand slightly, then seemed to remember what she was doing and jerked it back down. “Uh, so you can’t do that again right now?”

“No. It’s way easier to be in the shadows than make them work. Lazy bastards.”

“Okay, good.”

After a quick glance to the door, Kayla darted to her feet and ran, knocking over her chair as she went. She only got about three feet before Quinn shot up next to her, crossing the room in about a second and clamping a hand onto her arm.

“Let go!” Kayla shouted, twisting madly against the grip. “Let go! You’re fucking _insane_. God, _let go_!”

“Aah!” Quinn hissed and her hand jumped off of Kayla’s arm, drawn in to be cradled against her body. It was all Kayla needed to pick herself up and dash out the door. She was probably halfway down the hall by the time Santana stood.

“You okay?”

Quinn huffed out an annoyed breath. “She burned me. It’s not bad.”

Whirling around to face the rest of the group, Santana glared. “Okay, who else wants to take off? Come on, let’s go. We’re not gonna get ourselves hurt just to keep you here.” She looked around the group, making eye contact with each of them in turn, and Noah didn’t fail to notice that she held his gaze the longest.

Because he was the one with electricity coursing through his body, the stuff that had hit Mindy for a minute and dropped her so hard they were still waiting for her to wake up. Her handgun lay in front of Santana’s place at the table.

“Good.”

“Okay, question.” Mike cleared his throat and gestured at the group seated around the table, squashed into the small area with chairs that were half from the kitchen and half dragged in from the living room. “Obviously, we’ve already started… doing things.” He gestured again, more gingerly this time. “So how come we still can’t remember anything?”

“Depends what did this in the first place.” Santana shrugged. She picked up the gun, fiddling with something that might have been the safety — Noah didn’t really know guns — and sliding it into the pocket of her jacket, which she still refused to take off. “You got shocked into using the powers; maybe you need something different for the mind.”

“Plus,” Quinn added, calling it out over her shoulder as she went to the sink and began to run her hand under cold water, “you can unmake a whole mind, but powers, a _body_ … that’s harder. It’s a physical thing; not easy to get rid of.”

“Second question. How come I can’t use mine?”

Santana stared at him just long enough that the atmosphere in the room became uncomfortable, quiet except for the stream of water and a soft hiss from Quinn. “Have you tried?”

Suddenly, Brittany shoved her chair back and stood up, and Noah was almost worried she was going to run (everyone seemed really excited about getting in or out of his apartment today), but she just grinned. “Oooh, do me! Do me! What am I thinking of?”

“Uh.”

“I’ll give you a hint,” she said, winking. “It’s a kind of fish. Just try it!”

Looking to Santana for confirmation, Mike raised his eyebrows at the nod he received in return, but turned back to Brittany. “Okay, I guess.” He rolled his shoulders and cleared his throat, blinking his eyes once or twice before leaving them wide open and staring deep into Brittany’s. A hand came up to press against his temple, wrinkling the look of extreme concentration on his face, while the other reached out toward Brittany.

A moment later, the concentration fell away, and his eyebrows came together in confusion.

“A… starfish? But that’s not—”

“They’re my favorite.” Brittany beamed. “See? You got it!”

Santana didn’t seem as impressed. “You don’t have to hold your hand out all dramatic though, dumbass. It’s a mental thing.”

“Oh. I thought you said powers were physical.”

She rolled her eyes. “Start mentioning superpowers and suddenly _everyone’s_ a fucking scientist. Right, ignoring that for now, because we’ve gotta get to the important stuff. Every one of you,” she said, gesturing to the table, “disappeared after a job. Not for long, but you got back late. And then you freaked out and decided to change up your lives.”

“What about Quinn?” Mike asked.

Quinn lifted up her head at the sound of her name, abandoning her examination of her hand to rejoin them at the table. “I was on a forced vacation.” She shot a glare in Santana’s direction.

“Mm,” Santana hummed thoughtfully. “Harder to hate me for it now, though, isn’t it?”

“It’s never hard to hate you.”

“Feel the love. Anyway, that’s what we know. And that’s shit. It means nothing.”

Hardly believing he was actually _contributing_ to this discussion, Noah opened his mouth anyway. “Doesn’t it? I mean, I remember tons of stuff that di—, well, _you_ say it didn’t happen,” he corrected, unwilling to yield quite that far just yet. “Hell, I remember what kind of juice I drank on the plane to Iceland when they ran out of Coke. That’s specific. It’s not like stuff just got erased.”

“Not a mind-wipe, then.” Santana tapped her finger against the table as she thought. “A correction. That’s— okay, I know, like, nothing about this mental crap, but that’s gotta be harder. Way more precise. Hey, Mike, you wanna try taking a look inside?”

Mike jerked around to face her fully. “Sorry, what? I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Found Brittany’s starfish, didn’t you? Just see what you can get.”

“Fine.”

Flicking his eyes around the group, Mike finally landed on Chris, who was sitting right next to him. He started to raise a hand, then glanced sideways at Santana and lowered it immediately, sighing. His eyes closed.

Soon enough, they were open again, and squinting at Chris like his face had changed all of a sudden. “Huh.” He cocked his head to the side. “Okay, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be getting here, but it feels wrong.”

“‘Wrong’?” Santana’s fingers stopped tapping and she leaned forward. “Just ‘wrong’?”

“I… guess? And really… really regular. Neat, organized. And kind of warm.”

“Cool. So much to go on.” There was a groan from the living room, and Santana smiled. “Or something that’s actually useful.” She walked away, and Noah scrambled to follow her along with the rest of their group.

On the carpet, Mindy was finally awake, and even looked vaguely alert, blinking up at the figures gathered around her with a soft groan.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Santana stood with her feet an inch away from Mindy’s head.

“She’s Mindy,” Noah offered, but Santana just shook her head.

“Na, that’s not her real name. It’s Agent Something, right? Not a very good one, because you followed me up but didn’t bother to check how many people might be in the room. So, Agent what?”

“Fuck you,” Mindy muttered.

Santana bent down to flick her on the forehead, and it looked much less friendly than when she had done the same thing to Noah a few minutes ago. “Yeah, I don’t have time for that shit right now. Quinn, you’re with me. Everyone else can go wait in the kitchen.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold up.” Noah caught Santana’s arm, dragging her back up to his level while the others started a slow troop back into the other room. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t seem fazed. “If you were normal, you’d be helping me. Actually, you wouldn’t be, because you’d’ve started without me and gotten chewed out for it.”

“This is my apartment,” Noah said sternly (though he doubted it would have the desired effect on Santana). “So you’re not gonna _do_ anything that would—”

Santana actually managed to look offended. “‘Do’? I don’t ‘do,’ Noah; that’s them. _They_ ‘do.’ I’m just gonna talk and listen. I’d like to think I’m intimidating enough on my own.”

“Jesus, this is just like a crappy spy movie.”

“Maybe. But we’re the good guys.”

The problem was, Noah wasn’t sure he knew her well enough anymore to be sure he could believe her. He could see the worry hiding in her eyes, the names of her missing friends (even if he still wasn’t convinced Kurt hadn’t just gone off somewhere). But he’d watched this girl fall off a borrowed pogo stick and try not to cry when she skinned her knees.

‘ _That was way too long ago_ ,’ he reminded himself, but turned around and walked back into the kitchen to wait. Trust. That was their thing. They’d worked on that for too long for him to forget it now.

-

It was just twenty minutes later when Quinn and Santana walked back into the room, and by then, everyone had gone off to do their own thing. Chris and Laura were talking softly at the kitchen table, Mike was camped out in the corner leaving messages on Tina’s phone and occasionally asking an unresponsive room why she wasn’t picking up (Noah told him once that she was probably still at work and then gave up), and Noah was still staring at the coffee he hadn’t touched since he’d made it. It’d probably be cold by now, anyway.

Without breaking stride, Santana walked straight over to Noah and grabbed his face to shove her tongue down his throat. It took him a moment to realize what was happening.

“What the _hell_ was that?” Noah took a few steps back, wiping traces of lipstick away from his mouth.

Santana was searching his face. “Nothing? Really, you got _nothing_ from that?”

“ _What_ nothing? What was that supposed to _do_?”

“Damn. Sometimes that works in the movies. Shock flips a switch or something.” Quinn rolled her eyes and walked away, heading over to lay a reassuring hand on Mike’s arm.

“Well, this isn’t a movie!” Noah scowled, still trying to wipe his mouth clean.

“Funny, because just half an hour ago you were insisting it was.”

“You’re not his true love, San.” Brittany, inexplicably, looked far more disappointed that the kiss hadn’t had the desired effect — whatever that was meant to be — than that her girlfriend had been kissing a man. “And he never forgot you.”

“Ah.” Santana nodded sagely, as though that explained everything. “Knew I was missing something. Shame we can’t get Kurt in here to—”

“Kurt?” Really? “Don’t think that’d work either, girls, unless you can find him over at wherever-the-hell he ran off to and get him to talk to me, first. We’re not really in true love territory right now, not when he’s busy being such a massive bitch about—”

“Noah, shut up.” Santana was glaring now, any trace of amusement drained from her face. “I thought we went over this.”

Noah huffed, waving her away. “He’s not _missing_. Why would he be missing and I’m not? Like you said, okay, maybe something fucked with our memories, but didn’t you say people kept breaking up after?”

“ _Why_ would he be missing? Kurt _glows_ in the sun; you can’t hide stuff like that, no matter how much you screw with a guy’s head. They can’t fix everyone.”

Chewing his lip roughly, Noah considered whether or not to ask who ‘they’ were. So far, it did seem that Santana’s arguments were supported, mostly because he couldn’t think of any other reason why he would be generating electricity all of a sudden, but it made _sense_ that Kurt had left. There was a ball of anger lodged deep in his chest that rose up every time he thought of Kurt, and that wasn’t a memory, that was raw emotion; why would he have that if they hadn’t had an ugly break-up after getting their heads screwed over?

Still… Fine. “They?”

“Yeah. Special Agent Lady over there is a lot more boring than I thought agents were _allowed_ to be.”

“Where is she, anyway?” He was crazy about the idea of her whipping open another door to come crashing through. Or going out a window.

“We locked her in the bathroom.”

Okay. Good enough.

“She says they never told her anything, but the point is we know it’s a government thing, which tells us pretty much everything, except location.” Santana smirked. “Apparently, _that_ is the one thing they decided to trust her with. Stupid of them, but great for us.”

“A location? For what?”

She raised her eyebrow, and damnit, Noah was _done_ with being judged today. How was he supposed to know this shit with his _memory_ gone? “You didn’t think all these cool superpowers were for show, did you? You gotta use ‘em, too. We’ll get in a good, old-fashioned break-out scene to round out your terrible spy movie.”

Here it was: the moment he’d been looking for, where he could put his foot down and say “stop.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Mike spoke up from across the room, looking up from his phone for the first time. “You said there were people there, right?” When Santana said yes, he nodded. “Okay. I’m in.”

At Chris and Laura’s hesitant nods, Noah let out a disbelieving laugh. “Are you people serious? You think we can go in and get people out if it’s the government that’s locking them up? I already said, this isn’t a movie, it’s just _like_ one, and we’re gonna get shot if we go in there. It’s not worth it.”

“God, you are so going to hate yourself for this when you get your head on straight again. Kurt’s not gonna be fond of you either, if I tell him you didn’t even want to go get him.”

Noah glared. “Shut up Santana. Kurt’s in Iceland.”

“I already told you that you didn’t _go_ to Iceland.” She crossed her arms, leaving no room for argument, but Noah started one anyway, aware that the entire room was still staring at him.

“No, you said we didn’t get on the plane _that day_. Look, something’s screwed up here, I _get_ that, but it’s not like I kept track of the date that well when I was gone. You said people disappear after a job, right? And the ones who come back are only missing for like a day? So, okay, maybe that happened, and then we forgot about it, and we got on the plane a day late.”

“Or—”

“No, not ‘or,’ San. I’m not buying it.”

“Yeah, are you really? Or do you just not _want_ to?”

His jaw clenched, but he didn’t answer.

“Right. Okay. Come on. Britt?” She jerked her head toward the bedroom and snagged Noah’s arm, dragging him along behind him as she went for the door with Brittany trailing after them. She didn’t let go until they were in the bedroom with the door closed and locked. While Noah was wondering what it would take to move this whole thing to another apartment (maybe one that didn’t have his underwear lying on the floor or doors which he was responsible for when they were damaged by people crashing through them), Santana whispered something to Brittany, who nodded.

When Noah looked up again, Brittany was taking off her shirt.

“Whoa, whoa, okay. The kiss didn’t help at _all_ ; I don’t think sex is gonna do anything either.” Not that he would _mind_ having sex with a seriously gorgeous woman on a normal day, but this wasn’t that, and these two were starting to freak him out.

“Perv,” Santana accused offhandedly, but her focus was clearly elsewhere. “Just look.”

He did, and found Brittany turned to face away from him. His first thought was that at least she’d kept her bra on, so maybe this wasn’t about to get really weird, but then he saw the scars. They twisted across her back in lines and spirals, filling the space. Noah couldn’t tell if they were meant to be patterns or not, but they certainly weren’t random.

“What are you doing?” Noah asked finally, unable to take his eyes off of Brittany’s back.

“Proving a point.” Santana didn’t seem to be able to look at the damaged skin at all. “You’re up, Britt.” She backed away, leaning against the nearest wall to listen.

Brittany turned back around. The scars on her front weren’t quite as bad, but they were still impressive. “There were men.” Her voice was soft and toneless. “They came in one of the nights Santana was away. They wanted something from her, but I didn’t know what it was, because she hadn’t told me anything yet. They stayed until she walked in on us a few hours later.”

Noah felt like he should probably be grateful for the way her eyes held his, solid and still, keeping his gaze from wandering down to the scars, but it was just the wrong side of disconcerting. It felt like a warning.

“I’m okay now.” She shrugged. “But it hurt.”

It was only quiet for a moment before Santana picked up the slack, either because she didn’t want to give him a chance to speak or because she knew that he couldn’t. “That was just three men I’d met once before, who wanted some stupid art thing I didn’t even have. Morons. Took me five seconds to beat their asses once I walked in, but they did _that_ before I got there.”

In the space of a slow blink, she was standing in front of him, holding his eyes as carefully as Brittany had and digging her fingernails into his arm. “This is hundreds of men, a whole fucking organization with resources and training and government funding. Guys who don’t like him, some of them because they just don’t like us on principle and probably a few who hate Kurt very specifically. With way more than a few hours on their hands and no real reason to hold back besides an honor system that isn’t going to last very long in practice, not without potential liabilities to back it up.”

Her hand tightened where it gripped him. “So you look at me, and you tell me again. Tell me it’s not worth trying.”

And he couldn’t, really. Seeing Brittany on that was more than bad enough.

“Fine. You better be right.”

“I am,” Santana said, and Noah knew for certain that at the very least, she believed that.

Santana left the room first, but Brittany took a moment longer while she put her shirt on, and Noah held himself back to talk to her.

“Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, you did.” Brittany smiled and then walked right past him, already moved on. “It’s okay. You’ll remember it later.”

When they got back to the kitchen, Santana was already gathering everyone together. “Alright, we’re gonna go over some stuff for now, because you guys are pretty much as out of practice as you can be, and we’re gonna head out later tonight.”

“Tonight?” Laura took a small step forward, closer to the center of activity. “Why not now?”

Santana held up a hand and wiggled her fingers. “The shadow thing isn’t just for flashy stuff. I can hide us better than anyone could ever think, but it’s gotta be dark out. Unless you _want_ them to know we’re coming.”

“I got Tina on the phone,” Mike interrupted. “Look, she’s worried. I’ve gotta go and—”

“No, you don’t.” Santana pointed in the direction of the bathroom. “That one’s been following Noah around. You wanna make a bet on whether they’ve got an agent trailing after you, too? You’re just going to make it worse for her if you go home.”

As if to prove her point, there was a crash from further back in the apartment, and a moment later Mindy was out of the bathroom, flying through the living room and headed toward the door. She’d almost made it when Quinn moved, placing herself in front of the woman faster than should have been possible, shoving Mindy back and a moment later standing calmly while a hastily-thrown punch passed right through her own head (he’d have to ask her about that, because intangibility and speed didn’t seem like they should go together, really, or so he’d learned from comics).

Mindy, startled only for a second, took a step backward to aim a second gun — Noah hadn’t noticed it until just now; where had she been keeping that? — at Quinn’s chest, and there was a shot.

Mindy fell to the floor, eyes wide open and unflinching from the blood that dripped into them from a hole in her forehead.

“Well.” Santana lowered her gun, gaze hard as she stared at the body. “Change in plans, then, because _wow_ was that loud and the walls in this place cannot be very thick. We’ll have to go to my place until it’s time to leave.”

There was a corpse in his living room. What the hell was happening? The highlight of his day should’ve been making French toast for breakfast.

“Come on. Quinn and I will drive.”

Quinn nodded and rounded people up to drag them outside. “ _Now_. It won’t help anyone if you stay here and get yourselves arrested.”

When Santana stopped staring at the bullet hole she’d driven into Mindy’s head, Noah walked up next to her. “So you’re shooting people now?”

She shrugged. “They’re all going to be using their guns, no questions asked. Why shouldn’t we do the same?”

-

They made one stop on the way to Santana’s apartment, a drive which was tense and quiet except for a brief argument between Brittany and Santana, and the occasional “Did you hear that? Is that a siren?”

Santana’s hands clenched on the wheel when they’d stopped, glaring at the apartment building they were parked in front of. “Are you _sure_ we can trust him?”

“Yeah, definitely. Especially if we tell him it’s for Kurt. He gets all protective.”

“Okay. Okay, let’s go.”

Swinging the car door open, Noah stepped out onto the sidewalk, followed quickly by Santana and Brittany, who was still quiet after having lost the argument.

Finn buzzed them up without asking who it was, and so they got to see the look of confusion when he opened the door. “Oh. I thought Rachel was… What’s up?”

“Hey. Listen, do you mind if Brittany hangs out here for a while?”

“Uh, how long is a while?”

Noah ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Like… a couple of days, maybe?”

“What?”

“Hey,” Santana broke in, holding out a hand to Finn and whipping it back almost as soon as he’d taken it, “Santana Lopez. Kurt ever mention me?” Finn opened his mouth, but— “Good. Okay, so here’s the deal. We’re gonna go to…” She looked to Noah for help.

“Iceland.”

She nodded. “Right. Iceland. To find your brother and drag him back so I don’t have to listen to this bitch whine anymore. Brittany’s my girlfriend. She can’t fly, freaks out when we get in the air; she needs a place to stay.”

At the first half of that, Finn smiled. “Oh, good. Wait, why does she need a place? Doesn’t she have her own?”

They had a story, even if it wasn’t a very good one, but Brittany spoke up before they could even get started. “I can’t be alone. There’s this guy at work, he’s been staring at me for a month; sometimes he follows me home.” She shivered slightly, and Noah had to applaud her acting skills. “I just can’t be alone.” Her voice broke, just a little, on that last word.

Appealing to Finn’s protective nature. Smart girl.

“I, um. The apartment’s still kinda bare. I do have a couch; it doesn’t pull out, but…”

“Thanks.”

  


-

  


  
**The Mission**

  


  


‘ _There is no way in_ hell,’ Noah decided, ‘ _that this should be happening right now. In any way. Ever._ ’

He’d been saying the same thing for hours, he knew, but the day kept getting more and more surreal. He wanted to throw up a hand and say “Whoa, hold on for a minute!” but he doubted anyone would listen (since they never had before). Actually, at this point, he was a little worried that trying it would get him shot.

Looking back at the day, maybe he should have given up the whole “this isn’t happening” thing hours ago and noticed this was real. Sometime between Brittany taking off her shirt and the neighbor’s girlfriend dripping blood onto his carpet.

Maybe he should have realized it when Quinn was telling him that her powers were based on vibrations (“I’m not really in one place when it’s turned on, so I can’t be seen or hit. It speeds me up a little too.” “That doesn’t sound very scientific.” “Nope.”). Or when Santana was explaining about Laura’s magnetism. Or when Chris punched a hole in the lobby wall of Santana’s apartment building, which wasn’t as cool as he would’ve thought because it turned out to be more about manipulating the drywall than actual super-strength.

Or maybe he should’ve figured it out before all of that, because after he’d shot enough electricity out of his hands to leave a woman incapacitated on the floor of his living room, it should have been a sign that shit was going down.

He was getting it now, finally. At least, he thought he was. He hoped he was, because, again, he was seriously feeling the possibility of getting shot.

Not yet though, because he was carefully hidden along the wall of what looked like a very boring government building. In a shadow. So, _that_ was happening.

Santana’s shadow-thing was really, really useful, even though it meant they’d had to wait a couple of extra hours until the sky was dark enough for it to _be_ that useful, and even if it was creepy as hell to be inside a shadow while Chris and Quinn worked on getting them in.

It wasn’t anything like the movies, and it was fast. Maybe that was what finally convinced him it was real.

-

An alarm went off almost as soon as they stepped inside. And by ‘alarm,’ he didn’t mean a giant, blaring horn with flashing red lights, just a high-pitched beeping from a sensor that Noah couldn’t disable fast enough.

Part of him knew this. He couldn’t tell if the years of paint ball (had those been real? Maybe not…) had actually ingrained instincts in his mind or if it was left over from everything he couldn’t remember. Maybe both.

Noah had taken a psych class once, back in high school, because they used to let kids who did well enough on a test take that instead of economics, and apparently the guy sitting next to him who didn’t shield his paper too well actually knew his stuff. So he knew there was this thing called implicit memory that stayed in your head when everything else didn’t. It was all stuff like tying your shoes, driving a car, knowing the route from home to the restaurant you ate at every Friday; things you learned forever, did over and over until they _stuck_ even when you didn’t remember learning them.

Was that what this was? Was the way his body sunk down at the sound of footsteps, crouching on the floor and hiding a tiny ball of sparks in his closed hand, something he’d done so many times that he couldn’t forget how?

Probably, because it wasn’t like hiding would do him any good at this point. When the footsteps rounded the corner, Noah leapt up, throwing himself at the first person who got close enough to hit and knocking them both to the floor. He tried shooting out some of the electricity that had settled in his hands, but it didn’t seem to do much; was he using it right? Of course, it was hard to tell, since he couldn’t really see the guy through that huge, black suit.

He was still moving around, though, trying to get his gun up between them, so Noah gave up on doing it the flashy way and just grabbed the man’s head and smashed it into the floor.

It was quick, fueled by instinct and anger and a desperate need to _not_ let that gun get pointed at his head, and a moment later the body below Noah was still. With that hood on, Noah couldn’t tell if he was dead or just knocked out. And it only took five seconds.

Santana pulled him off before he could consider checking under the hood and stood him up in what he realized was a hallway littered with several bodies that the others must have taken care of at the same time. “Okay. Some of you are not as useful as you should be, because of the suits.” Santana looked pointedly at Noah. “So find a way around them, okay? Mike.”

Mike wasn’t paying attention, just staring down at the bodies with an odd expression on his face. With a small jolt, Noah wondered if the fact that he could read minds meant he knew exactly which of those men had died.

“Mike!”

Finally, he looked up. “What?”

“Where are we going?”

Gesturing to one of the suits on the floor — one of the living ones, Noah supposed, if Mike could still read him — Mike started walking in the direction the men had come from. “This way. I think.”

“Lead the way. Let’s go.”

Before they’d gotten two steps, another pair of suits came out a door behind them, but a moment later Laura had one of the guns in her hand and sprayed a round of bullets down the hall, stopping them in their tracks. When they had both fallen to the floor, Laura turned around to follow Mike once more. Noah waited only a second before joining them.

It felt weird to follow after Mike, who squinted around and muttered to himself and always knew which turn to take, because there was no real indication that he should have any idea of where they were going. Maybe it should have been even weirder that they encountered suits twice more on the way and never bothered to check if their retaliation left people dead, but the phrase “they’re trying to wipe us out” rang in his head.

That was what Santana had said earlier in the afternoon, when Chris had been in the middle of his own personal crisis — Noah had gone first, but they’d each gotten one — and Noah had been about to call her out on being over-dramatic before he went back over the list of events in his head and really thought about it.

Neither Mike nor Chris dealt out heavy blows, probably because they weren’t comfortable doing serious damage. Between the heat of the moment and the fact that these men were obviously going in for the kill rather than just arresting them for breaking and entering (and had been from the start), though, Noah was having an increasingly difficult time caring about that.

As long as there were no suits coming at them, it was still quiet — Noah kept waiting for that giant alarm to go off but it never did — but it _felt_ loud, maybe because of the tension that seeped into his bones and grew thicker and thicker with every turn they took that didn’t seem to get them any further. There were soft sounds echoing down the halls, things that sounded like they would have been loud if they were anywhere nearby, shouts and bangs and something that might have been a gunshot. Noah didn’t want to be around when they got close enough to be heard clearly.

“Left or right, Mike?”

They’d stopped at a fork with Mike looking back and forth between each of the choices, looking uncertain for the first time.

“I don’t know, I— Maybe I read him wrong…”

“Just pick one,” Quinn said sharply, eyes darting wildly around the three separate pathways leading up to their position, and Noah couldn’t blame her. It was too many angles to be attacked from. “Any guess is as good as— There!” She pointed to the left, where four more men had suddenly emerged from a door labeled ‘staircase’ right next to the junction.

Noah sprang forward quickly, falling behind Quinn only because of her unfair advantage of speed. If he couldn’t shock them, he’d decided after the first encounter, he was better off with a quick first move, so he could slam them into a wall or rip their gun away before they could hit back. He did both of those things now, smashing the butt of the acquired gun into the man’s head and watching him drop to the floor.

Around him, Santana was pulling a man into the shadows, Quinn was reappearing behind the suit who’d tried swinging at her to no effect, and Laura was making use of the knife she’d stolen from Santana’s kitchen.

Then they were done, and Santana re-materialized from a shadow in the corner, dumping a limp body to the side. “Okay, we have to—” For the second time in less than a minute, they were cut off by the appearance of a group of men, this time slamming into them from behind.

Taken by surprise, not expecting more so quickly, Noah fell to the floor under the man’s weight and grunted at the impact, but at least he managed to knock the gun away and get a grip on the guy before he could reach for it. It was a scramble after that, not one of those clean-looking fight scenes but just rough and dirty and at one point Noah reached up on instinct to pull at the guy’s hair, just to get his face a little further away and make some room.

He didn’t get hair of course, just the hood, which pulled away to reveal the man’s face, twisted in anger as he said something that Noah couldn’t hear over the shouting and collisions of bodies and shots that were sounding out around him. Without hesitating — was this an instinct, too? — Noah reached up and shoved his hand into the man’s face, sending bolts of electricity through the exposed skin, grateful that it was finally useful.

When the man fell, limp and pushed to the side at Noah’s guidance, his face was burned. Unrecognizable. Not that Noah had recognized him in the first place, either.

With the weight of the man off him and the immediate danger gone, he noticed that the sound around him had stopped, and rose to find himself, again, surrounded by unconscious bodies. Santana was bent down over one of them, and when she stood up again, shaking her head, Noah found he recognized this one.

Mike.

Which… What was he supposed to do with that?

Noah swallowed hard, trying to get the image of Tina’s worried face — “ _I know something’s wrong._ ” — out of his head. She’d been working off facts, though. She wasn’t the telepath; Mike was (had been). Mike probably would’ve _known_ if she had died; she wouldn’t have anything except maybe a bad feeling until they told her.

Assuming they didn’t all end up the same as Mike, and enough of them made it out to _do_ that.

“Okay,” Santana said finally, though it couldn’t have been that long because one of the suits was still slumping against the wall, tugged along by gravity and slowly sliding lower and lower where he sat until he fell over and lay still. “Okay, we have to go. Now.”

Before they were attacked again.

“Which way are we supposed to—”

“We’ll split. Noah, c’mon.” Santana jerked her head to the right. As they turned to walk down the indicated hall, Noah heard Quinn direction the other two to the left.

This was all guess-work now, so they ran instead of walking, hoping to run into something useful. They were moving fast down a straight hall when they passed another off-shoot to the right, and a few feet down, Noah spotted a room with the door open and the light on. Hoping the others would follow him — which was a pretty good bet, since he was just barely in front — he turned the corner and darted over to the doorway.

It wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for. It looked like a medical room, kept neat except for a small area with items strewn around the body of a man lying on the floor. Like the others, he wore a black suit, but the hood wasn’t up. With his glasses broken on the floor beside him, Noah could see his blank eyes, making him, _un_ like the others, easy to identify as dead.

He was lying next to a wheelchair, but Noah couldn’t see any evidence of whatever patient he might have been pushing around. Still, this was pretty solid proof that—

“Someone’s been here,” Santana said behind him, and pushed herself away from the door to continue down the same path, ignoring the main hall in favor of looking for more people in a more promising area. Noah joined her, tearing his eyes away from the bleeding body and wondering, since it wasn’t them and he doubted that Quinn’s group could have circled around to make it here before them, who else was wandering around and taking out suits.

It didn’t take them long to find something, just a short jog down the hall and then a turn when they came to a corner, and they stood facing another open door, this time one made of bars, which revealed a very different room.

The contents were startlingly similar, however. Noah wondered when they would come across someone who was both alive and not trying to kill them.

The difference here was that they might know this man, Noah realized after a moment, because he did not have the same suit that everyone else had been wearing. He was lying prone on the floor, so that they couldn’t see his face, bleeding from a bullet hole in the back of his head.

Not just shot, then. Executed. That much was clear. The phrase “wipe us out” repeated in Noah’s mind once more, and he hated that everything they saw was proving it true.

Santana steeled herself and walked over to the body, turning it over. Noah squinted in the dim light until the face of James Jones came into clear focus.

“I thought you said he healed,” Noah said quietly. That was probably why they didn’t release him, Santana had said, because healing was obvious and involuntary, and couldn’t be blocked away.

“He’s not immortal.” Santana whipped around, striding quickly away. “C’mon. We gotta spend our time on people we can actually save.”

They didn’t find anyone they could help in the next room, or the next, or the next, all set out in a row down the hall and all identical, right down to the body lying face-down in the center of each. Santana pressed a hand into her eyes at the fifth one, and Noah had to wonder what the hell they were doing there. They weren’t helping anyone, just identifying bodies, and they were getting _themselves_ killed for it.

The next room was empty.

The next had a body, but it was encased in a black suit, and had been left without a gun. Noah breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, so someone _was_ here.”

And then they were running again, rounding more corners until they’d gone in a complete circle because they were back by that same junction where he’d noticed the very first open door to the medical room, and all the rooms were empty. Without another option, they headed back the way they came, which took them toward the shouts and bangs that grew louder with every pounding step.

For what felt like the hundredth time in maybe ten minutes, Noah ran into a man in a black suit, knocking them both backwards. After barely a moment to shake himself out, Noah jumped at him, still working off the idea that an early strike was the best policy. This one wasn’t wearing a hood either, and his eyes squeezed shut in pain when the back of his head collided with the floor. “Wait,” he was saying, “Wait.”

But the thing that made Noah pause wasn’t his voice, it was the hand that wrapped around his arm and hauled him back, off the man, until he was dumped onto the floor. “Stop!”

The other thing that stopped him — from jumping _back_ onto the man, this time — was the voice. Or, more specifically, the fact that he recognized it.

“Sam, get up,” Kurt said, reaching down to pull the man to his feet and then standing in front of him as if to shield him both from Noah and Santana as well as the small crowd of people who’d come up behind him (people who weren’t in black suits, whose faces Noah recognized from the agency).

Noah stared, unsure how he was supposed to be reacting. It probably didn’t matter, because he never followed those guidelines anyway, but still. He’d only been half-convinced that Kurt wasn’t in Iceland, right up until the moment he saw him, and now there was relief flooding his veins to mix with all that anger he still couldn’t seem to get rid of, and the sparks running alongside it didn’t help. And why was Kurt standing in front of one of the guys who was trying to kill them?

That last part was easier to focus on.

Pushing himself to his feet, Noah only stopped himself from launching himself at the man because Kurt was in the way, but Kurt obviously saw the aborted motion.

“ _Don’t_. Sam’s trying to help. He went around pulling people out of cells and he’s the only reason we’re not _all_ lying dead in those rooms and he’s nearly gotten himself killed twice to do it, so don’t.”

Kurt looked very calm about it all, but when he spoke up from behind Kurt, Sam didn’t have nearly the same attitude. He just started babbling. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m _sorry_. I just… I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to— They didn’t tell us _anything_.” But Noah didn’t bother to pay attention to an explanation from a man who didn’t even sound like he much believed it himself.

“Where’s the guy in charge?” Santana asked, but Kurt just should his head.

“He won’t be here, not this late.”

“Fine. We have to move.” Santana didn’t seem to care about Sam, moving her eyes over the group of people he’d brought with him as if tallying them together. There weren’t many. “Come on.”

It hit Noah that it hardly mattered how he wanted to react to Kurt’s presence, because they didn’t have time for any big emotional scene when there were guns going off around the next corner, anyway.

A second later, that turned into guns going off _here_ , and Noah crouched down low against the wall, realizing a moment too late that maybe he should have been worried about more than himself, but he was still working off instinct, and his first thought when he heard gunfire had been nothing more than a straightforward _get low_.

It stopped almost as soon as it had started, and Noah looked up, trying to figure out why, to find Quinn and Chris taking on the two men who’d been shooting. Laura was nowhere in sight. And… Oh. That was blood. On him. Didn’t feel too bad, though. He brushed a hand over the hole in his shirt, right at the very edge of his stomach, and hissed in pain. ‘ _Probably a graze_ ,’ he decided after a moment’s examination (he knew that, _why_ did he know that?) and went back to looking around, leaving one hand pressed tight to keep the blood flow down.

Directly beside him, one of the people who’d come in with Kurt was clutching his arm and gritting his teeth, and Kurt himself was trying — and failing — to lower Sam gently to the ground.

“Sorry sorry sorry,” came out of Sam’s mouth in waves, but it stopped after just a few repetitions when Sam ran out of breath to say it with.

“C’mon,” Noah insisted, tugging Kurt away from the limp body and the blank eyes that Kurt was still trying to catch hold of with his gaze. “We’re going.”

The next time they met someone, it hardly felt like anything had happened, because it didn’t even take long enough for the group to slow down.

In one quick move, Kurt held the man’s gun down toward the floor and pulled off his hood with his other hand, then he reached out to press two fingers gently against the man’s exposed forehead, just for a moment.

The man fell away from Kurt’s hand to land on the floor, blank eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Is… Did you just kill him?”

“Yes.” Kurt shook his hand out and stepped over the body to keep moving down the hall.

They ran. Past corridors they barely remembered, past the piles of bodies they’d left behind on their way through the first time (marking the path like large and bloody bread crumbs), past the one with Mike’s body lying exactly where it had fallen, because there wasn’t time to do anything about that except pull at Kurt’s arm when he paused with a gasp at the sight and then keep running.

They ran fast enough and in the right direction, out of the building rather than deeper in, that they were only met with one more suit — alone and taken out before he could raise his gun — before they were bursting through the nearest door to the outside and stumbling across the pavement, trying to remember where the cars had been left. Noah had never heard the phrase “Where’s the car?” spoken so frantically in his life.

When they found the damn things, they had to squeeze to fit everyone inside, but they managed it, and then Santana — along with Quinn, he assumed, in the other car — was pressing the gas pedal to the floor and speeding off.

Noah didn’t think it would be a very impressive chase, if the men bothered to come after them at all (they’d dropped away as soon as everyone was outside the building, all speaking rapidly into their radios at the same time). New York traffic wouldn’t allow for a speedy, dramatic getaway.

At least Kurt had managed to get himself into the same car that Noah was in, squeezing in beside him and holding his hand tight. Noah’s other hand was busy pressing against his side — it was just a scrape, but it still hurt like hell and bled onto Santana’s seats — so he couldn’t take much action on it, but at least he knew what to feel now.

He offered Kurt a shaky smile which grew wider when it was returned. “Hey.”

“Hey. I’m going to fix up your head, okay? Soon as I can.”

“Okay, cool. I’m just… gonna pass out now.” Yeah, that sounded good.

  


-

  


  
**The Fallout**   


  


  


It was dark when they stopped the car. It had been dark when they’d started, too, but now they were “safe,” or at least safe enough, piled into Santana’s apartment with wounded people cushioned on every surface in the living room, and Kurt missed the sun.

The next step should have been for him to undo some of the damage he’d done to their minds, since their bodies were, after a couple of tense hours and the use of every single bandage Santana kept in her apartment, stable. But he’d used up all his energy in getting out of that building, and now he was running low with no convenient way to recharge. He wasn’t on the verge of passing out just yet, but he certainly didn’t have enough in him to heal an entire mind, even though reversing the process would be a much simpler task than the muck-up he’d done in the first place.

So he couldn’t fix them. Not even one. Not even Noah.

He looked around for something to distract him from that fact, from the guilt that churned in his stomach along with the sandwich Quinn had pressed on him hour or so after they’d settled in. He didn’t need much, just something. It only had to last until sunrise.

He ended up staring out the window, searching the streets for any sign of approaching vans full of men in black suits, until Santana walked in and asked him what the hell he was doing.

“They’ll find us here,” Kurt said, keeping his eyes on the passing cars. “I mean, they’ll find us anywhere, it’s not like we can hide with this many people and half of us injured, but do we want to make it this _easy_ for them?”

“If they want to get us, they’ll have to launch a full-scale assault on a downtown apartment building, and they’ll have to explain why their men keep getting sucked into the shadows and disappearing when they try. That’s not easy.”

Picturing the attempt, Kurt let a smile curl his lips upward. “You are amazing.”

“I know. Go to sleep.”

He knew better than to argue with Santana.

-

For the first time in nearly a month, Kurt woke with the sunrise.

He hadn’t actually realized, when he was curling up in the only empty chair left, that he’d placed himself at just the right angle to catch the first light in the morning, but he was more than grateful. It might have been a very nice coincidence, or maybe he’d known where to position himself. Either way, when he opened his eyes, he felt alert and satisfied and _free_ , like taking a deep breath after weeks of having stones laid over his chest.

It wasn’t that he’d been without any sun at all; in fact, with how fast they’d been trying to reprogram people, he hadn’t even gone a full day since that first time they’d brought him into the room. He’d always woken up in the dark, though, and that was when he needed it the most, so there’d always been that period of disorientation, of feeling like he couldn’t keep his eyes open or hold his own head up or _think_ straight, and it was the worst kind of routine he’d ever developed.

But now he woke up and felt normal, only it wasn’t normal anymore, but it should have been, and his head was spinning around in circles but at least he could think well enough for it to be _able_ to go in circles. It was confusing and different but it was so hard to feel anything but calm when he was sitting in that sunbeam, so he stayed there not-crying and soaking up energy for a good twenty minutes before standing up.

When he did get up, he’d settled on a feeling, and it was a good one.

No one else was awake yet, probably from a combination of having been up half the night and being sore and bruised (and some more than that), and he considered leaving them like that, but… This was probably the only opportunity he’d have to be even somewhat ‘alone’ with Noah. For a while, anyway.

“Noah.” He kept his voice quiet, shaking Noah’s shoulder in a soft way that wasn’t really shaking, but got his attention well enough. It must not have been a very deep sort of sleep

“Hmm?” Noah hummed vaguely. “Wha?”

“Hi.”

Blinking, Noah pushed himself up by his elbows, placing his body a bit higher on the couch so he could lean his head against the armrest. “Oh, hey. So. You’re not in Iceland.”

“No, I’m not.” Kurt ran a hand over Noah’s arm, feeling for the pain in his side and sending back a wave of his own making when it seemed higher than it should be. That would be more effective than painkillers, anyway.

At the feeling, Noah raised an eyebrow, but seemed to accept it as something he could appreciate without understanding. “Sorry, by the way. Would’ve done something before now if I’d remembered. Dunno how I forgot.”

“It’s all right. It’s sort of my fault, anyway.”

“Your fault?”

Oh. Had they not worked it out?

That would be an awkward explanation, then.

“Never mind. You’ll remember in a minute, okay?”

“Okay. Y’know what? I knew I was gonna get shot,” Noah murmured.

Kurt laughed. “Of course. We’ll add precognition to your list of skills, shall we?”

Without waiting for an answer, Kurt started pulling, drawing into Noah’s mind through the hand on his arm. This was a natural change, easier and infinitely less violent than the first, mostly just tearing down the walls he’d made before and letting the memories flood back into the spaces where the belonged. The constructed ones were displaced, floating around the surface without a clear purpose, and Kurt pulled them away.

It set his stomach squirming, even as he did it, to erase things from Noah’s mind, but they weren’t meant to be there and they would only cause more problems if they were. Noah would have a vague idea of what he’d believed during the couple of weeks his mind had been altered, but that was all, and that was healthy. Kurt just wished it didn’t feel like he was stealing something.

He was done a minute later, removing himself carefully and sitting back, and he let go of Noah completely to let the effects sink in without any outside influence. He could see the moment when Noah realized what had happened — when the last clear memory that had been taken slid back into place — and the moment, directly after, when he decided not to care.

Noah reached out for him, and Kurt let himself be drawn in close, curling himself on the couch beside Noah and sinking in the contact. He’d been hovering at the edge of hating what he could do for a while now, but this…

He could _feel_ the forgiveness seeping in through his skin, feel the way it faded to an undercurrent below _relief_ and _concern_ and a half-dozen other emotions that Noah had decided took priority right now, because it wasn’t as though there was much to forgive in the first place ( _except_ , he could hear, and knew Noah would say this part out loud the next time he needed to lighten the mood, _except that you left me alone with Brian for a week and a half; I might never get over that one_ ).

Kurt had been wrong, before. _This_ was breathing.

-

He went through everything once, talked it all over with Santana after she’d woken up and before he’d gotten around to fixing Chris’ mind. That was the only other person here who needed it; for everyone else, they’d have to work their way around the city, showing up at people’s doorsteps and hoping they would listen (he’d jump at them and grab their hands if he had to, but he didn’t _want_ to have to).

She got them each a mug of coffee and then sat across the kitchen table to listen, and she didn’t try to hug him after he was done like he was certain Quinn would have done had she gotten her way and been included in the talk. He was grateful for that; his emotions were still battling it out within his mind and he wasn’t sure he could have stopped himself from projecting if someone had touched him just then.

After that, he figured, it wasn’t his responsibility anymore. Anyone he’d reprogrammed would know most of the story as soon as he set them right again, and anyone else could ask Santana about it.

-

By the time everyone else had gotten up and started moving around the apartment, Kurt had already resolved to spend the day making himself as busy as he possibly could. Unfortunately for him, there just wasn’t that much to do, not after he dealt with Chris, so he settled for just ignoring it whenever people tried to talk to him. 

Everyone just sat around feeling tense and uncertain, building up the suspense until nine in the evening, when they all nearly jumped out of their skin at the sound of Santana’s ringtone. Her face was drawn when she answered it, picking herself up off the couch and moving quickly away to slam the bedroom door behind her. When she came back out ten minutes later, she told them all that they could go home.

“What do you mean?” Chris asked warily. “Who were you talking to?”

“Someone who can tell us that we’re okay to go home.” Santana crossed her arms, a little too tight to be simply a stern gesture and making Kurt wonder what she’d heard on the phone that made her want to hold herself together like that. “I don’t know what it means,” she continued, speaking loudly over the arguments that sprang up all over the living room. “They just said they were discussing further action. We can go home. Just don’t be alone, alright?”

She wouldn’t answer any more questions after that, just told them not to “take any more action,” looking pointedly at Kurt as she said that, which he took to mean that he should wait to make his trip around the city looking for the reprogrammed.

Kurt and Noah left in the morning because the graze along Noah’s side was making it hard for him to move around much and Santana didn’t have a problem with them taking up her couch for another night as long as they promised to stop by Finn’s place and send Brittany home on their way. She got two more calls during the twelve extra hours they stayed, and looked increasingly tense after each of them.

“Are you sure you’re okay to walk?”

Standing nervously just an inch or two from Noah’s side, Kurt watched as he took a few slow steps forward, an arm clutched around his stomach the whole time.

“I told you, Kurt, I’m fine. Hell, I fought my way out of a government building when the thing was fresh and didn’t collapse.”

“That was when you had gallons of adrenaline flooding your system,” Kurt snapped. “This is just a normal morning.”

“I’ll make it.”

It was handy that Santana at least had a spare sleep-shirt around that was big enough to fit Noah, because he would have been awfully conspicuous wandering around the city in a ripped and bloody t-shirt. Kurt, at least, just looked like someone who didn’t put very much effort into his appearance, which worked right up until he showed up at Finn’s doorstep and had to wave off worried questions by explaining how the airline had lost his luggage.

“That sucks, dude. But, hey, I’m glad you’re back now! You wanna come in for a minute, or…”

Glancing sideways, Kurt tried to gage how much energy Noah had for getting the rest of the way back to their apartment. “Yeah, sure.”

After this, he realized, he should probably not visit Finn again until they had everything figured out. It wasn’t even a good idea to stop by this time. The rational part of his brain reminded him that it was fairly obvious Finn was his brother and there was no way a government organization that had known so much about him wouldn’t know this too, even without his visits, but he was hardly in the mood for rational thought just now.

They told Brittany that she could go home, and then they sat down in the kitchen and Finn explained to him about Dad, and the accident, and how by now he was totally fine, and Kurt had to excuse himself to go to the bathroom because _God_. Maybe this wasn’t much but he’d been gone for a _month_. Important things could have happened. If that accident had gone badly, he wouldn’t have been around to hear about it for at least a week after the funeral.

Idly, he wondered if Santana had gotten around to talking to Tina, yet. Or Mercedes. Or… hadn’t Laura had a boyfriend?

Once he’d splashed some water onto his face and gotten his breathing back to normal, Kurt headed back to the kitchen, but paused just outside the doorway when he heard the voices coming from inside.

“…sure you’re both okay, dude? ‘Cause last time I saw you, you were a mess. And Kurt sort of doesn’t look so great.”

“We’re fine. It was just a long flight, y’know? We’re both tired.”

“How’d you find him so fast, anyway?”

“Well, I had help.”

“Yeah, that chick looked scary.” Kurt smiled a little at the mention. There hadn’t been a name, but he would bet very good money he knew who Finn was referring to.

“You have no idea.”

“I’m just glad he’s back, anyway. And you’re back, with him? I mean you look… You look okay.”

“Yeah. We’re okay. It was just a misunderstanding.”

Kurt forced himself to twist around and head through the doorway with a smile before they could get any further.

-

At home, it was almost disturbingly easy to make things ‘normal’ again.

Kurt wasn’t surprised to see Brian at the mailboxes when they walked in, but he _was_ surprised when the man launched himself at them, grabbing them in a tight hug for less than a second before jumping back again and running his eyes all over them, asking, “Are you okay? Are you sure you’re okay?” without pausing for an answer.

Brian looked more emotional than Kurt had ever seen him before; he might have even been holding back tears, and Kurt couldn’t understand why (because he couldn’t have known about anything that had happened to them, he just couldn’t) until halfway through the rambling speech that followed.

Something about robbers coming into their apartment and Mindy (who the hell was Mindy?) going upstairs to check on the noise and getting _shot_ — could they believe it? In this neighborhood? He’d thought it was _safe_ here — and not knowing where Noah or Kurt were and being so, so worried. He managed to sound simultaneously like a gossiping neighbor and like someone who’d actually lost something dear, which made sense once Kurt finally picked up on the fact that he and Mindy had been seeing each other, and Kurt was impressed despite himself.

Of course, it didn’t _really_ make sense until Noah took him upstairs and explained what had actually happened. Kurt wasn’t sure where the cover-up had come from, but it seemed like something he shouldn’t question.

After that, they mostly stuck inside their apartment, contact with the outside world limited to looking out the window and ordering Chinese food to be delivered.

They didn’t talk much about what happened.

Most of their lives had been spent carefully avoiding certain issues; it was practically second nature by now. Kurt assumed it would have to be discussed at some point, that it would bubbled up when they were both feeling tired and inclined to be upset, and they would feel better for it in the end, but that wouldn’t be for a little while, yet.

Instead, they pretended that this was the vacation time they’d asked for almost a month ago, lounging around and watching trashy shows and leaving each other alone only long enough for one of them to use the bathroom.

The closest they got to talking about anything was this:

“Did you know that killing someone takes less energy than putting them to sleep?”

Kurt had woken up early one morning, before the sun had even come up. He’d lain there in bed with dizzy, irrational thoughts and waited until the sun shone in to break them up, but even with his mind clear he hadn’t been able to let go of them completely, so as soon as Noah had opened his eyes he’d turned to him and started speaking.

He picked at a cuticle as he continued, peeling the skin back until it started to bleed. “Keeping them unconscious means I have to leave an imprint in their minds for a while after, but all I have to do to kill them is send out a single message to make things _stop_ , and then I move on.”

“I don’t know how many people I killed,” Noah offered. “Couldn’t tell, not with the hoods on.”

That morning was unique for the fact that they went back to sleep after the sun had risen, curled up in each other and buried deep in the blankets to ignore the day.

-

Three days after they’d returned home and exactly a month after the job, they got a call from Santana that was more than just the standard check-in (Kurt would call her paranoid, but she was pretty justified).

A “clean slate,” as she explained it, this new plan they were all supposed to follow. She’d been arguing with the people in charge (not Agent Jensen, higher than that) for days now, and all they’d been able to agree on was that nothing had been handled correctly and both sides had committed very serious crimes.

Frankly, Kurt was impressed they’d even admitted to that much, but apparently, as Santana explained, the break-in had been too big to keep quiet and word had gotten around to more important people, people who actually had morals. Word had gotten to the public, too, but it was being passed off as a vague “mass incident,” which handily accounted for the dozens of deaths that had occurred.

The president was involved, now, and pissed at having never been informed.

In the end, they’d had two choices. First, they could acknowledge all the crimes and hold everyone accountable, which would be a media circus and involve hundreds of people and lead to a very serious investigation of multiple branches of the government.

Second, they could ignore it. Sweep it all under the rug like it didn’t exist. Blame the deaths on the unidentified “incident” and provide unofficial compensation for families that had lost loved ones, and keep the damage down to a few firings that could be blamed on other issues.

The clean slate approach. The best option.

Noah was not pleased. “After what they did?” he exclaimed, demanding to know why Santana had agreed to it. It had taken Kurt reminding him — in the kindest way possible that still wasn’t very kind, because it really couldn’t be — that he’d killed people. A lot of people. And yes, it would be satisfying to see Agent Jensen and the rest be punished, but would they get that good a view from a jail cell? A _legal_ one, this time.

Santana waited until they were done arguing about it to drop the last, biggest piece of news. There was an extra requirement along with this approach.

The government was acknowledging their mistakes, which was great, but they were also understanding that their approach of silently supporting criminal activity as a way to keep a group of people in check had not been working either. They wanted to start over, with everything out in the open.

By which they meant making an official announcement. Exposing each of them and their powers to the general public. Integration.

That wouldn’t work either, Kurt knew, but what was he supposed to do about it?

-

“Maybe we should have gotten married,” Kurt said, a few days later.

It came out of nowhere. They’d been watching terrible daytime tv and eating Indian food (just for some variety from the Chinese that was usually a take-out standard), and Kurt hadn’t even meant to say it.

“What do you mean?” Noah asked, setting down his fork and twisting on the couch toward Kurt, just a little, like he could already tell where this conversation was going.

“It’s not like it helped us that much.” Kurt shrugged. “We always said we wouldn’t because it wasn’t worth it, it was dangerous, but look what happened anyway. And now we’re going public and it’s not going to matter anymore.”

Noah chewed at his lip before he spoke. “Well. We _could_. Now, I mean. Like you said, there’s no reason not to.” He paused, stared at Kurt, and laughed briefly. “Wow, I’m sorry. ‘There’s no reason not to’? I think that might be the worst marriage proposal in the history of… anything, really.”

“There’s probably been worse. I can’t imagine that offering livestock in exchange for a marriage was very romantic.” Kurt looked down. “But anyway, that’s not what I meant. I just… I think it’s too late, now.”

When he spoke again, Noah’s voice was softer, wary. “Too late? I— I don’t think anything’s changed. Not on my end, anyway. I think I’d kind of enjoy being married to you.” He send Kurt a reassuring smile that wasn’t returned.

“It’s not us. We’re fine. It’s just everything else. The world’s going to know about us; everything’s going to change.”

“So why would that matter?”

Kurt’s heart swelled a little despite himself and he bit back a smile. This is never how he would have pictured his life. Not the powers and the danger — he’d accepted that as part of himself from somewhere around the age of ten — but the man who loved him enough to say “fuck the world, let’s get married” and mean it.

But there was a reason he’d brought this up. “It’s just… I don’t think they’ll let us.” At Noah’s questioning look, he continued. “It’s not going to be good when everyone knows. The powers won’t be impressive or interesting. To them, we’ll be terrifying. They’ll want to feel safe, and that means keeping control.”

“I didn’t exactly figure they’d be asking us to sign posters, yeah.”

“We’re not superheroes, not even close. We’re just regular people who can do terrible things with hardly a thought, and they don’t know us well enough to judge whether we’ll do that. We’ve never done anything for them.” Kurt paused, wringing his hands together while he thought. “We’re going to lose things. Friends. Rights. Important things.”

“Marriage,” Noah added, drawing them back to what had started the conversation.

Kurt sighed. “Gay marriage is only legal in a select few states, even now. You think they’re going to let people like us do it anytime soon? We haven’t even gotten started. It’ll get worse for _years_ before it starts to get better.”

It was quiet after that, the sobering conclusion plopping itself solidly into the room and making itself comfortable between them on the couch.

“If we did it now, though,” Noah said finally, slowly, “we could maybe have a few of those years before things went bad.” He edged himself closer, shoving through the space between him to take Kurt’s hand in his.

This time, Kurt couldn’t hold in the smile. “You know, that was only marginally better than the first proposal.”

“I’ll work on it.”

  


-

  


  
**Epilogue**   


  


  


“So.” Finn stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. “You ready to tell me _why_ I had to be here at seven in the freakin’ morning?”

“Because the park opens at seven and there aren’t that many people here yet.” Kurt shrugged a little as he spoke, because he knew it wasn’t quite what Finn was looking for.

“Yeah, but… Why do we need for there not to be people? And not that I don’t love Central Park, but what was wrong with your apartment if all you wanted to do was talk?”

“There’s more sun here.”

“But—”

“Finn, really. I can’t explain it and make any kind of sense before we actually talk about what we came here to talk about.” Kurt glanced warily around the area, tapping his fingers against his leg and wondering if this was really the best idea after all.

Originally, he’d made the argument that it almost didn’t matter if someone saw him, anyway, but the fact was that it did. It really did. Everyone was freaking out about the time-line and moving carefully from one step to the next, and he didn’t want to see what would happen if he shoved them into the open ahead of schedule. The next argument made much less sense but was oddly effective: He wanted to. Their apartment, and the window that faced the sunrise, was lovely, but it wasn’t the same as sitting in an open field outdoors and soaking in the sun.

Noah hadn’t seemed to care either way, just volunteered for guard duty.

“Where is Noah, anyway?” Finn said, as if he could read Kurt’s thoughts.

‘ _Right idea, wrong direction_ ,’ Kurt thought, and had to stifle a snort of laughter that threatened to escape even though he knew it wasn’t terribly funny.

“He hasn’t left you alone for weeks, man. I mean, I’m glad you’re back together and everything, but he’s like everywhere you are, now. It’s weird.”

“He’s just worried.”

“What, that you’ll break up with him again?”

“It was— Can we talk about that later?” Or never, maybe. Kurt still hadn’t decided exactly how much he wanted to share. “And he’s here, by the way. Around the corner.” Watching the path, really.

They’d picked a good spot, Kurt decided. Sure, it wasn’t the most comfortable seating in the park, and the only thing preventing them from sitting directly on the ground was a slanted rock that had more than its share of dirt on the surface, but it had good cover. Trees and bushes kept it out of sight from most angles, the slope of the hill blocked out the back, and a large outcropping of rocks directly in front of them took care of the rest.

The only potential danger was people deciding to get a head start on the day and camping out on those rocks earlier than usual. That was why Noah was ‘around the corner,’ on the other side of the rocks and watching the path to make sure no one came up out of nowhere at just the wrong time.

It would only be a minute, and he’d rationed himself carefully this morning. His skin might even stay light at the end of it.

“You guys are okay, right?” Finn asked finally, after a minute of silence in which Kurt happily avoided the inevitable. “Because you _were_ gone for like a week, and when you got back, you didn’t really talk to anyone. Not for a while. And neither of you seemed, you know, happy about it?” He glanced sideways at Kurt. “You can tell me if it’s none of my business.”

“We’re okay.” Kurt bit his tongue against the ‘for now’ that threatened to slip out after. “And I don’t really know if it’s your business or not, but I’m probably going to tell you about it anyway.” He probably would, in the end, tell Finn, at least. Finn, who looked so worried about something he didn’t even have the information to understand, yet. Finn, who would help _them_ instead of trying to take out his anger at a government organization that did not, technically, exist. That was probably what Burt would do, and it would only get him arrested. But Finn…

“Oh. Cool. ‘Cause, you know, I’m sure there’s a good reason why you had me take a day for a ‘family emergency’ instead of waiting for Saturday. I’m already the substitute teacher, y’know. They’re not supposed to need a sub for a sub.” He grinned at Kurt to soften the sentence into something friendlier, but it was his eyes, concerned and searching Kurt’s face carefully, that made Kurt smile back.

“A very good reason.” Saturday was a rather important date in the time-line. Kurt was getting a jump on the whole process, with just one person. “I really am going to tell you, it’s just that all these questions lead back to one thing and it’s… it’s an odd thing to explain.”

“Try me.”

“Actually I thought I might just show you, instead. That’d be easier. And, well, after you see it you’ll either think you’re crazy or you’ll have to believe me. You know you’re not crazy, right?”

“Uh, I think so? How weird is this thing?”

“Pretty weird,” Kurt admitted.

A light show would have to be enough to convince Finn. Maybe Noah could’ve done a better job, because electricity shooting out of a man’s hand and scrambling a cheap cell phone or a digital watch (or whatever they brought out for a demonstration) was pretty impressive, but that didn’t feel like an option. It might be because of how much he knew Finn had worried about him while he’d been ‘away,’ but he felt like he owed his brother a more personal explanation. So, lights it was.

He had considered, for the span of about half a second, using one of his more impressive abilities. Plucking a thought out of Finn’s head and reciting it back would certainly have proved his point, but the idea was dismissed almost instantly and Kurt had spent the next several minutes fighting the nausea that had risen with it. He hadn’t been wholly successful, but at least he’d held on long enough to reach the bathroom.

That was new — and worrying — but it could be left for later.

“So,” he said finally, carefully tracing the skyline with his gaze to avoid Finn’s eyes. “You’re going to hear a lot about this from other people after today, but just trust what I say, okay? And please don’t freak out.”

“Yeah, uh, I’ll try not to.” Finn sounded nervous again, which meant that Kurt should just suck it up and do this. He’d spent more than enough time stalling already.

“Okay. I’ll explain everything after, really. Just watch for a minute.” He risked a glance at Finn and got another smile for his trouble. When he returned the gesture, it was with the — hopefully irrational — fear that he might not see it again for a while.

No. Deep breath.

Kurt tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and opened himself to the sun.

  



End file.
